Seed Science

The Lone Star Baby and I spent some time outside looking at butterflies and collecting rain tree seed pods and such early this evening.  It seems to be the time of year for butterflies and moths around here - even the mariposas monarchas, as the LSB says, which are migrating through today.  We ended up on our porch steps picking apart seed pods from our young mimosa tree and looking at the seeds.  Some seeds had holes in them and the Lone Star Baby was sorting the seeds into piles depending on whether or not they had holes in them.  Picking apart one seed pod, I found our likely culprit - a patch of webbing and a tiny spider inside one pod.  We determined that the spider was making the holes in the seeds, either eating through them or laying eggs in them.  The Lone Star Baby then hypothesized that the seed pods with holes in them were the ones that would contain seeds with holes in them.  She then opened only seed pods with no holes in them and, sure enough, the seeds inside were all whole.  Ah, learning.