I can never get enough of science, and the science of plants fascinates me, with its tale of timeless survival, battle for supremacy, invasion for territory and amazing adaptations. 

Plants live in a completely different time frame from us.  Some live out their life cycles in a short, single season.  They sprout, flower, and go to seed, then die in a matter of months.   Others, like the Giant Sequoia, can live for thousands of years.  There are trees in California that are three and four thousand years old.  Now that really is older than dirt.  And amazing to stop and think about.

Over the millennia, plants have adapted to conditions, pollinators, neighbors and other factors to produce a fantastic array of adaptations that make one think that plants just might have a brain.  They have developed colors and fragrances to attract pollinators, and spikes and poisons to repel grazers and other plant invaders.  Some have flowers that mimic a female moth for pollination, dots to mimic butterfly eggs, sticky dew to attract ant protectors, traps for insect meals, red-bottomed leaves to maximize feeble sunlight, reflexes to touch to elude plant-eaters--the list is fascinating and endless. 

And plants do all this with just water and some minerals from the ground, air, and sunlight.

These adaptations have developed because of genetic diversity from pollination over great distances of time.  The plants with the right traits live to produce seed, which can carry those traits into the next generations to ensure survival.

Seeds are amazing.  They carry everything, from DNA of the parent plants (yes, plants even reproduce