We learned about the very special underground seed bank that is housed at Wakehurst. It has billions of seeds and is treated as precious treasure. The people at Wakehurst take good care of seeds that come from all over the world so if a natural disaster happens and plants get killed, they are able to replace them.
We were shown the smallest seed but we could only see it under a microscope as it was so small! The largest seed they have is a Coco de Mer. It was bigger than a football! When it starts to germinate it takes 5 to 6 years to grow. In groups we explored a carousel of activities. We studied seeds from all over the world, we learned that we get cotton from the cotton tree, the cocoa seed gives us chocolate and the Coco de Mer floats along rivers.
We learned what seeds look like when they germinate. We peeled the seed apart and saw that inside it has a food store (a bit like a packed lunch). When we split this apart, we saw it’s shoot (the baby bean plant) and the root.
Then we guessed how many seeds were in each fruit before cutting them up to count the seeds. We discovered that there are far more than we estimated! Lantern fruits (Physalis) have lots of tiny seeds and rose hips have lots of large seeds that fill most of the inside of the fruit.
We also loved looking super closely at the seeds through a microscope and comparing the range of seeds.
After that a lovely lunch outside, we walked around the gardens thinking about our senses.
We looked for the tallest tree and felt its spongy bark, we used our eyes to closely look for a range of leaves and seeds including the Acer and Gingko tree which has been around since the dinosaurs!
We stopped for a moment of calm to listen and to look at the surface of the pond to spot the reflections of the colourful trees.
Florence: I feel calm when I hear the stream.
Ted: I can hear the birds.
We finished the day by getting down low beside the plants and turning on our microscope eyes and asking ourselves: Where would you live if you were a mini beast?
Throughout our walk, we collected lots of fallen leaves to take back to school so that we can make our own Andy Goldsworthy inspired art!
My best part was:
Charlie H: Looking at seeds.
Zach: Finding out about the biggest seed.
Rosie: Collecting different colour leaves!