The Many Faces of Seeds

The Many Faces of Seeds

A Closer Look at Seeds
Lesson: 1.13
Level:
Intermediate
Station: Seed Starting
Format: Class Project
Rating:
Intermediate Lesson 1.13 Many Faces of Seeds

Lesson Overview

Every seed library has some convention for organization like plant family, common name, or the season they prefer. This lesson requires students to create their own classification standard for the seeds in their seed saving library.

Goals

  • Students will be able to classify seeds based on a set of factors that they establish.

Outcomes

Students will create a set of classification rules in order to organize seeds in the Lab based on those criteria.

Teach the Teacher

Tools & Materials

  • Cups
  • Seeds
  • Notepads
  • Pencils
  • Laptop
  • Spreadsheet

Activity

There are many ways to classify seeds to provide an organizational structure to your budding seed library. They can be grouped by physical characteristics of the seeds like size or color. Plant families provide a common grouping convention as well. Seeds could also be grouped based on preferred growing season or the color of their fruit. There are numerous options to consider.

In the flagship Edible Learning Lab, we classify seeds as either hydroponics or raised planter stock. From there, we further define them by plant family to keep our library organized.

Seed classification exercise. Have the students use as many adjectives as possible to describe an assortment of seeds, then use these descriptors as classifying criteria to sort the seeds based on specific physical attributes. Log the data. As an extension, have the students design a spreadsheet to organize their classifications and graph the results to reflect the varieties or total seeds in each classification.

Related Lessons

Give the Advanced lesson a try now that you’ve completed the Intermediate Lesson! Or revisit the Beginner Lesson as needed.

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