On Food and Cooking

Once male and female cells have come
together and developed into offspring, they
must be given a good start. The animal mother
can search out a promising location and
deposit her young there. But plants need help.
If the seeds simply dropped from the plant to
the ground, they would have to compete with
each other and with their overshadowing
parent for sunlight and soil minerals. So
successful plant families have developed
mechanisms for dispersing their seeds far and
wide. These mechanisms include seed
containers that pop open and propel their
contents in all directions, seed appendages
that catch the wind or the fur of a passing
animal — and structures that hitch a ride
inside passersby. Fruits are plant organs that
actually invite animals to eat them, so that the
animals will carry their seeds away, and often
pass them through their digestive system and
deposit them in a nourishing pile of manure.
(The seeds escape destruction in various ways,