SOME plants are profligate with their seeds. Take the gorse shrub. Half a hectare of the stuff sheds about 250 million seeds; as its pods dry, they twist open and hurl their contents through the air. Other plants have serotiny – the habit of hanging on to their seeds for dear life, keeping them locked up in a protective case such as a pine cone, often for years. Serotiny is the norm for some plants, including the lodgepole pine, the rock rose and South African proteas.
Why do they do it? The main reason seems to be so that they can…
