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- Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber
Seeds of many kinds of pollinated flowers develop in protective structures. And many of those structures are unique, picturesque, and interesting, including some in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Native to the southeastern United States, up to southern Pennsylvania, the many annual sweetgum tree blossoms produce hard, spiny balls with several small holes in each one where tiny, dark seeds fall out and blow away on the wind.
Each ball is an inch across and brown. Many of those spiny balls fall to the ground in winter, but some cling decoratively to their twig moorings through that harsh season. Sparrows and finches ingest many sweetgum seeds through winter.
Teasels are flowering plants from Europe that have a two-year cycle. In its second year, each plant, in clumps of teasel in abandoned fields and along country roadsides, can grow up to 6 feet.
Each teasel plant has many tiny, pale-purple flowers in a few bristly, protective flower heads. After insect pollination, each bloom produces a seed that is carried off on the wind, if not eaten by sparrows and finches.
The spiny, empty seed structures of teasel were used in medieval Europe to tease out wool. Today, some people use spiky, rustic teasel flower heads in indoor decorations.
The seed pods of aquatic, perennial American lotus plants are the shape and appearance of shower heads, but bigger. These water lilies are native to the shallows of lakes and sluggish rivers in much of the eastern United States.
Each plant holds its bowl-shaped leaves, which are 1-2 feet across, a foot or two above the normal water level, along with its 4- to 8-inch, pale-yellow blossoms. Those beautiful blooms are pollinated by bees, and each fertilized flower produces a hard, brown seed in a half-inch hole, one of several in each “showerhead” structure.
But, to me, the cube-shaped, quarter-inch, seed-producing pods of native, perennial seedbox plants are the most unusual of these seed-bearing structures. Those tiny, warm-brown seedpods are attractive and interesting. And each rustic “box” has a hole on top where tiny, dark seeds shake out into the wind.
Seedbox plants inhabit partly sunny, wooded swamps. Each plant grows up to 3 feet and has several four-petal yellow blooms in summer. When pollinated by bees, each flower grows seeds in a square capsule between its four flower sepals.
Winter is the best time to see some of these unique seed-bearing structures, and others. The foliage of their plants is on the ground, leaving the plants bare but still attractive in different ways.
Nature always has something wonderful to experience, through the seasons, throughout the world.
Clyde McMillan-Gamber is a retired Lancaster County Parks naturalist.