Grade 5 · Unit 1: Investigating plant growth

Seeds

A seed is a tiny plant packed with food, waiting to grow.

Cut a fruit open and you will usually find seeds inside.

Seeds and fruits

Flowering plants make seeds inside their fruits. Some fruits, like a mango or an avocado, have one big seed. Others, like a papaya or a watermelon, have hundreds of small ones. Seeds come in many shapes, sizes and colours.

A pea pod is a fruit too. Each pea inside is a seed. Rice grains, wheat grains and lentils are also seeds – they are a large part of the food we eat.

What is inside a seed?

Soak a bean in water overnight and carefully open it. Outside is the seed coat, a tough layer that protects the seed. Inside is a tiny plant called the embryo, and a large food store.

The food store is often made of two thick seed leaves. They feed the embryo until it grows green leaves and can make its own food.

Are seeds alive?

Seeds look dead, but they are alive. While they are dry, they are dormant: alive but resting. When they get water and warmth, they wake up and start to grow.

Seeds have a very tough seed coat and very little water inside them, which helps them survive for a long time without growing.

Saving seeds

Farmers keep some seeds from each harvest to plant next year. Scientists store seeds of many plants in seed banks, in case a plant is lost in the wild. Bangladesh’s rice scientists keep thousands of kinds of rice seed.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, deep inside a mountain near the North Pole, stores over a million kinds of seed from around the world.

What I learnt