Seeds…apart from the obvious like sunflowers, where they do come from?

[Soubriquet]

Planting cress seeds the other day and it got me thinking, I’ve never seen cress with seeds. So, where do they come from?

What about things like carrots, and other vegetables?

I mean, fruit, and some flowers, you can see the seeds.
What about the rest?

They all have seeds or pips, sometimes they are hard to see as they are so small but carrots have seeds and flower heads if you let them get that far, normally they are harvested long before the seeds set.

I forgot carrots flowered

I’m guessing all veg do?

Yeah I think so - my Mum's just had some gorgeous flowers from leeks she left in the ground too long. I think some people will deliberately leave a few in the ground, so they can harvest the seed for next year.

I just found out that my stag's horn sumach tree's berries are where sumac (as in the spice) comes from! Fairly obvious now I come to think of it...

I think some plants are grown to seed rather than for fruit or veg.

If you leave the flowers ages, they go seed. I suppose it might happen to cress if you left it long enough.

Sounds strange doesn’t it…seeding cress

yes most (all?) plants produce seeds.
there are specialist seed producers that let all those things like lettuce, carrot, cress and all the others go to seed in a very controlled manner.

Most seeds come from flowers, I can't think of any that don't tbh. You get tubers for potatoes, ie a potato that has sprouted, and peanuts grow in a similar way. Quite a cool thing to grow. I took some from my bird seed pack and they sprouted. Sadly, the shoots got eaten so didn't get to see them grow peanuts.
Beans like runner beans, and peas as well, you can grow from the beans (peas) left to dry in the pods instead of picking them to eat.

peanuts are actually a kind of pea/legume (clue is in the name).
they flower just like other peas but then instead of the pods hanging down from the plant, the plant lowers the flower stalks to the ground and the pods develop underground.

For most plants, seeds come from the flowers.

There are 4 main types of land plants:

Bryophytes - eg mosses, worts. They don't have seeds, they produce spores when they reproduce sexually.
Pteridophytes - eg ferns. They also produce spores.
Gymnosperms - eg pines, conifers, cycads. They don't have flowers but produce seeds in cones.
Angiosperms - eg most plants, the "flowering" plants. They produce flowers and seeds.

Tubers, bulbs etc are a form of asexual reproduction. Seeds come from sexual reproduction. A lot of things that we eat, like lettuce, cress etc, we eat before they produce flowers and, therefore, seeds.

That is a very oversimplified/basic explanation though...

Fun fact: some bryophytes, pteridophytes and gymnosperms have flagellated sperm that swim through water to reach the egg.