Page 11 - The Miracle In The Seed

ave you thought in detail about the fruit trees in your gar-
dens, the pine forest you see from your window, or the pla-
H ne trees lining the road you drive? Do you know how these
plants appeared, and the stages they underwent before growing into
mature trees? Or do plants have a purely aesthetic meaning for you,
and it doesn’t really matter to you whether or not they exist? If you
think that way, you are deceiving yourself, because it’s largely due to
plants that there is an adequate balance of oxygen in the atmosphere
that enables you to breathe, and that you are not poisoned by excessive
carbon dioxide, that the humidity of the air seldom reaches uncomfor-
table levels, and is neither too hot nor too cold. That is to say, you owe
a great deal to plants for being able to lead a comfortable life. Nor are
these the only ways in which plants are useful to most living creatures.
In plants are found the vitamins and minerals you need in order to li-
ve.
How the general characteristics of plants influence the lives of li-
ving creatures, how they create nutrients through photosynthesis, and
wondrous details such as how great trees carry substances their roots
draw from the earth to the outer branches, are detailed in another bo-
ok, The Miracle of Creation in Plants. Here, we will examine a different
aspect of plants in more detail to help people look at the subject in a
different way. Everyone knows what seeds look like, and knows that
plants arise from seeds. But few have ever wondered how so many va-
rieties of plants can germinate from something so small and seemingly
lifeless, or how the seeds come to contain all the individually coded in-
formation that determines these plants’ characteristics.
How can fruits, with their unique tastes and aromas and just the
right degree of sweetness, come from something that’s small and dry?
Does the seed produce the tree and adorn it with fruit? Does the seed
determine the shape and color of fruit and flowers? Does the seed pack
all the information on the tree into the embryo it contains?
If people give such questions a little thought, they’ll start to won-