Anonymous Seeds

In my recounting of the days, I realise that I cannot merely number them off as if they were racehorses. Rather, I must insert, here and there, like the raisins in a pudding, a few nuggets of immortal factuality. And so, here is one such.

The plants that I nurture, that I cultivate crudely in lieu of my missing sibling, are most peculiar in their reproductive process. The Orchidaceae (or 'plants that look like testicles') are particular in this respect; they spawn uncountable numbers of minuscule seeds, spore-like in appearance and almost spore-like in their proclivities.

But unlike the spore, that merely seeks water, the seed of the orchid seeks a fungus. Not just any fungus, but one into which in can enter into some sort of carnal connection. For the juxtaposition of orchid seed with mycorrhizal basidiomyceteous fungus will produce a plant, where the seed alone will not.

You see, Nature has played the poor orchid a sad little trick. The seeds of the testiculiform Orchidaceae do not contain endosperm, and hence have no fuel for their green fuse. And, as that bard of Wales once wrote:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer...

The sad orchid must perforce draw upon the vitality of the gross fungus to fuel its future endeavours and its incipient beauty. It is a partnership that one might think is forged in Hell, but no, no, it is forged in Nature, which is (I assure you most seriously) probably worse.

So what can we do to help the orchid along? Why, we can provide artificially natural seed-cultivating media. All it takes is an agar matrix, in which we suspend the sterile (oh, what irony) but tasty extracts of some fleshy sugar-fruit (papaya perhaps, or coconut, or banana, or peach), and voila, we have created that in which the seed can grow!

Poor anonymous seeds! But now, with the medium provided by the deaths of their distant relatives, they can thrive and blossom! And who knows, perhaps some day they too will have their own names, and their own faces...