Plant Seeding

Plant Seeding

In propagating by seed, as in reproducing by buds, we select a portion of the parent plant—for a seed is surely a part of the parent plant—and place it in the ground. There is, however, one great difference between a seed and a bud. The bud is really a piece of the parent plant, but a piece of one plant only, while a seed comes from the parts of two plants.

You will understand this fully if you read carefully Sections XIV-XVI. Since the seed is made of two plants, the plant that springs from a seed is much more likely to differ from its mother plant, that is, from the plant that produces the seed, than is a plant produced merely by buds. In some cases plants "come true to seed" very accurately. In others they vary greatly. For example, when we plant the seed of wheat, turnips, rye, onions, tomatoes, tobacco, or cotton, we get plants that are in most respects like the parent plant. On the other hand the seed of a Crawford peach or a Baldwin apple or a Bartlett pear will not produce plants like its parent, but will rather resemble its wild forefathers. These seedlings, thus taking after their ancestors, are always far inferior to our present cultivated forms. In such cases seeding is not practicable, and we must resort to bud propagation of one sort or another.