Fruit-seeds feed us all

Javascript is required to use this website.

1 of 6

Tulip trees flower by producing a bloom shaped much like the unrelated garden tulip.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

Wild strawberries are tiny but produce a sweet wallop when eaten while walking pasture trails.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

Blackberries are blooming now as a first step in growing an edible, aggregate fruit consumed by bears, birds, raccoons and humans.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

A female ruby-throated hummingbird camouflages her walnut-sized nest by sticking lichens on the sides.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

White-tailed deer rely on vegetative plant growth until fleshy and dry fruits are mature later in summer.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

Seedlings use stored food inside a seed to have a quick start. Soybeans pull two seed leaves – cotyledons – above ground to manufacture even more nutrients.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

Jerry Davis For Agri-View

Plant fruits and seeds are many things to many habits and organisms. Seeds inside fruits are a hope that flowering plants will reproduce. Conifers do the same with seed cones. Fruits and seeds are often the most nutritious parts of a plant; they’re the part we eat, deer eat and birds eat. Each seed has an embryo inside each seed; they’re the way we grow more plants to get more fruit and seeds. Farmers sow seeds and then harvest seeds or fruits.