Tags
British wildflowers, seeds germinating on seedhead, Teasel, Teasel seedhead, viviparity, viviparous
Viviparity: noun; (of seeds) germinating before separating from the parent plant (from the Latin words vīvus, meaning alive, and parere, meaning to bring forth) (the adjective is viviparous), (Collins Concise Dictionary).
I’d seen a couple of photographic examples of viviparity on Twitter but had never seen this myself until a walk at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park on 28 December. The tiny green shoots on this Teasel are its own seeds which, for some reason, have not been released from the seed head and have now begun to sprout.
earthstar 
I’m curious, is it the same fenomena we can see inside tomatoes bought in market during a winter? Sometimes seeds will start to grow in “closed” tomato. Then, when we cut the slice, we will see seeds with tiny greeen stem and even leaves.
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I think it is the same, yes. I’ve never seen this but another reader said they’d found this happening in melons. Nice find! 🙂
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Hi Annie,
First of all, just want to thank you for your fabulous blog – it adds much interest and enjoyment to my day!
On the subject of viviparity, I once cut a squash open to discover that the seeds inside had started sprouting – not sure whether this is the same thing or anything unusual, but I had never come across it before…
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Hi Maggie. Thanks for your very kind words – comments like this give me the encouragement to keep on blogging every day.
I’ve never heard of seeds sprouting inside a squash but that certainly sounds like a case of viviparity. Thanks for sharing such an interesting example. 🙂
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