Todd Sturgeon, age 13, of Bessemer, Ala., for his question:
DO SEEDS HAVE MANY USES?
Seeds are the most important part of a plant. Because each seed has been given the form that is best suited to produce its own kind of plant, there is great variety in their shapes, sizes and colors. Seeds also have many uses.
The widest use of seeds is for food. Among all seed foods, cereals rank first. Rice is the most important. It is the chief food of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Large quantities of wheat are consumed throughout the world. Other important cereals are corn, oats, barley, millet, buckwheat and rye.
Edible fruits and nuts are seeds and seed coverings. Seed foods in the vegetable garden include beans, peas, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, okra, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and mellons.
Coffee, chocolate and cocoa are beverages made from seeds while vanilla flavoring comes from seeds also. Mustard, black pepper, caraway and nutmeg are other flavoring substances made from seeds.
Cotton is the fluffy down of seeds. Kapok is the down of similar seeds from a kapok tree.
Oils extracted from certain seeds are also very important in industry. Cottonseed oil, linseed oil, castor oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, coconut oil and palm oil are only a few.
Seed oils have many uses. They are used for food as salad oils and cooking fats and in making soaps and perfums, linoleum, printer's ink, artists' colors, paints and varnishes, insecticides and many other things. .
When the oil has been extracted from cotton seeds, sunflower seeds and soybeans, the remaining pulp is used for cattle and poultry feed.
Valuable seed medicines are strychnine and belladonna.
Seeds are also used in making industrial alcohol, plastics and synthetic rubber.
The seed has three important parts: a protective outer skin, or seed coat; an embryo, which will become the new plant; and a food supply, or endosperm, usually in the form of one, two or many cotyledons, or seed leaves.
The cotyledons are stored with plant food, chiefly albumen and starch or oily matter. These nourish the embryo as it develops.
The seed coats of some seeds, such as the bean, have two structures: the hilum and the micropyle. The hilum is a small scar where the seed was attached to the seed stalk. The micropyle is a tiny hole where the pollen tube that fertilizes the seed entered.
The epicotyl and the hypocotyl are tiny parts of the cotyledon. The epicotyi becomes the stem of the young plant. The hypocotyl develops into the plant's first root.