Imagine a day without seeds. It would begin naked on a bare mattress, with no cozy sheets or pajamas, and there would be no fluffy towel to wrap up in after your shower. All of those things depend on the fibrous seed coats of a plant we call cotton. Stumbling wet into the kitchen, you would find no coffee, and no toast or bagel to go with it. Those staples come to us from the seeds of an African shrub and a Middle Eastern grass. And if you thought to console yourself with a chocolate bar, you can forget it. Cocoa powder, as well as the cocoa butter that makes it melt in your mouth, both come from the seeds of a South American tree. At this point the day would be pretty much ruined, which makes it worth considering some of the other little known facts about seeds, these overlooked natural wonders we so depend upon. Here are ten:

Thor Hanson

Thor Hanson

Methuselah. The current record for the oldest viable seed belongs to the pit of a date palm named Methuselah. After 2,000 years buried in the ruins of a Judean fortress, it sprouted and grew into a healthy tree.

Vegetable Ivory. Polished tagua nuts once dominated the European button industry, and they remain a popular replacement for elephant ivory in the manufacture of chess pieces, dice, combs, letter openers, and fine musical instruments.

Fracking Beans. The recent shale oil boom relies in part on the seeds of an Indian cluster bean called guar. Guar gum is a vital thickener in the fluid pumped into new wells. It is also used to thicken ice cream, ketchup, and gluten free bread.

Daring Desserts. When adventurous chefs flavor desserts with tonka bean shavings, they're using the same seed that gave the world warfarin, a rat poison, and Coumadin, a prescription blood thinner.

Poisonous Necklaces. Bright warning colors make a variety of toxic seeds popular in jewelry making, including rosary peas, coral beans, horse-eyes, and castor beans, the source of ricin.

Seed Money. The Aztecs valued chocolate so much they used cacao beans as a currency throughout their empire. Archeologists have even discovered forgeries - fake beans carved from wood. Spices once had a similar cachet in Europe, used to pay everything from stock dividends to feudal tithes. When the current Duke of Cornwall, Prince Charles, officially accepted his title in 1973, he was presented with a pound each of pepper and cumin.

Spice Islands. During the height of the spice boom, the Dutch happily traded Manhattan to the British for the tiny Malaysian island of Run. Giving up a swampy North American colony seemed a good exchange for an island that produced one of the world's most valuable seeds: nutmeg.

Coconut Crazy. The current health craze for coconut products would come as no surprise to islanders in Southeast Asia, where coconut palms are known as "the tree of life," and "the tree of a thousand uses." Familiar as a source of beverages, cooking oil, and cosmetics, coconuts can also be turned into buttons, soap, charcoal, potting soil, rope, fabric, fishing line, floor mats, musical instruments, and mosquito repellant.

Double Coconut. The largest seed in the world is the coco de mer, a "double coconut" that grows on only two islands in the Seychelles. Mature seeds can weigh nearly 18 kilograms (forty pounds), and their voluptuous shape once earned them a role in fertility rituals wherever they happened to wash ashore. Early botanists gave them the scientific name L. callipyge, from the Greek phrase for "beautiful buttocks."

Adam and Eve. When the serpent enticed Eve with a luscious apple, he chose the perfect lure, something that evolved for the sole purpose of temptation. Because while the tiny pips inside the core may seem secondary to the tasty flesh, the truth is the other way around. Fleshy fruit, in all its magnificent variety, exists for no other purpose than to serve the seeds. Plants use fruit to attract animals and co-opt them into moving their babies around. Which means that the story of Adam and Eve is more than a tale of human origins and original sin. From the Tree's point of view, it's one of the greatest seed dispersal stories of all times.

The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History, by Thor Hanson, published 13th April 2015, £17.99, Hardback, Basic Books


by for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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