Subject: origin of plants/seeds

From: laura van dam <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jun 1995 16:55:12 GMT

I am a parent volunteer in Massachusetts teaching five- and six-year-olds
in my son's kindergarten class about how to research on their own. As
part of the project, for which the kids have come up with questions
they'd like to answer,  I am showing them a little about how newsgroups
work on the Internet. The kids are quite excited about the idea of
connecting with others who may know some of their answers, or may be able
to tell them how to find out. If anyone can spare the time and has
information about the following question, I'd be very grateful for your
help. In particular, one child--Ian--would like to find out "how the
first seed was made," that is, what is know about the direct origin of
plants. Thank you very much for any responses you can give. Laura

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From: [email-masked] (Marco_Bleeker)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 02:04:00

In article <[email-masked]> laura van dam <[email-masked]> writes:
>From: laura van dam <[email-masked]>
>Subject: origin of plants/seeds
>Date: 7 Jun 1995 16:55:12 GMT

>in my son's kindergarten class about how to research on their own. 

  How the first seed was made ?  Difficult question Ian !  First, there were 
plants that had no seeds. Such plants still exist: ferns. They have no flowers 
either. They just make spores on the leaves, billions of very little grains, 
like dust. Each spore can grow out to become a new fern. But- and this is a 
big but- it has to find water to start growing. Now there were some smart 
ferns, who made bigger spores. They also still exist, like a kind of 
tumbleweed in the desert (Selaginella). These large spores start growing 
already inside, to become baby-ferns, while they are still on the mother 
plant. This is a smart move, because the mother plant can give them the water 
and shelter they need.

  A seed is also a solution to living in dry places. All life came from the 
water, and ferns are still very dependent on wet places for their 
reproduction. The seed allowed plants to conquer drier parts of the land. 
Nobody knows how and where it exactly evolved. For instance, we find fossil 
fern leaves in charcoal. Or, we THOUGHT we found fossil fern leaves. But 
later we found the same leaves, carring seeds... So we call those extinct 
plants now 'Seedferns'. They were the first seed-plants, but we know very 
little about them...

  Bye, Marco

<[email-masked]>------------<http://www.euronet.nl/users/mbleeker/>
>-------------<Plants, Programs, Primitive creatures>------------------<
<Marco Bleeker>-------------NL-EN-DE-FR-------------<Amsterdam, Holland>

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From: Nancy Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 95 08:14:14 -0500

Hi, Laura and Ian!  Welcome to the newsgroup - I come from
Northern California, and I have studied plants here for about
20 years.  The seed ferns seem to be the ancestor of the seed
plants, but it was SO LONG AGO and we know so little that it is
all just guesswork!
   Seeds are very complicated structures (they look simple, but
they aren't.) If you, Ian, could some day find the first real
fossil seed, it would be a great discovery and you might win
the Nobel Prize!  The covering around the seed is really
interesting...if you have a microscope at school, soak a bean
seed for  a few hours or overnight, then peel off the coat and
look at it under the 'scope.  There are layers of tough cells
called brachyschlereids that form the coat and keep the seed
>from  drying out.   This was the big advancement made by the
seed plants...to keep from drying out, and yet let the embryo
remain dormant in the seed until conditions were just right for
germination.  Also, there is lots of food inside the seed for
the embryo to use when it starts to grow.
   Good luck with your project!  I am coming to your part of
the country in a couple of weeks to visit two grandchildren,
one in New Hampshire and one in New Jersey.  I love Boston!  -
N. Harrison, Santa Rosa, Calif.

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From: [email-masked] (Gordon T. Uber)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 1995 04:26:19 GMT

Laura,

My favorite story about seeds is "How Flowers Changed the World," a chapter
in Lauren Eiseley's _The Immense Journey_, Vintage Books, 1957.  If you
like to tell stories you may be able to relate parts of it to Ian, even
though it was written for adults.  A few excerpts:

"Plants traveled as they had never traveled before."  The well-fed,
carefully cherished embryos raised their heads everywhere."  "These
fantastic little seeds skipping and hopping and flying about the woods
and valleys brought with them  an amazing adaptibility."  "Grass was
beginning to cover the bare earth."  "... mammoths, horses and bisons
appeared."   In about fifteen pages a quick story of the co-evolution
of plants and animals.

Best wishes,

Gordon Uber
Palo Alto, CA

laura van dam ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I am a parent volunteer in Massachusetts teaching five- and six-year-olds
: in my son's kindergarten class about how to research on their own. As
: part of the project, for which the kids have come up with questions
: they'd like to answer,  I am showing them a little about how newsgroups
: work on the Internet. The kids are quite excited about the idea of
: connecting with others who may know some of their answers, or may be able
: to tell them how to find out. If anyone can spare the time and has
: information about the following question, I'd be very grateful for your
: help. In particular, one child--Ian--would like to find out "how the
: first seed was made," that is, what is know about the direct origin of
: plants. Thank you very much for any responses you can give. Laura