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What is seed dispersal?

Seed dispersal is how a plant spreads its seeds.


Plants also find a new home away from their parents.
Most children choose to move away from their parents after they reach adulthood. They start a new life and use their own resources (like the money they earn from a job) to establish a new home. Plant offspring move away, too--but, unlike humans, they don't wait until they grow up.

New plants move away from their parents through seed dispersal, which is the spreading of seeds away from the parent plant. Seeds carry an embryo--a new baby plant--inside of them. The goal of seed dispersal is simple: new plants that come from seeds that grow, or germinate, far away from parent plants don't compete for resources with parent plants.

Theornamentalist, retouched from Mechanismo CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en, via Wikimedia commons

Examine the picture of carrot seeds germinating. What resources do you think both young and parent plants need to survive? Think about the answer to this question, then click the Show Me button to see if you are correct.

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Correct! To disperse means to distribute. Since seeds carry plant embryos, new plants are carried away from the parent plant during seed dispersal.
Sorry, but that is not correct. To disperse means to distribute. Since seeds carry plant embryos, new plants are carried away from the parent plant during seed dispersal.
The spreading of new plants away from a
parent plant is called seed
.
dispersal
germination
development

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