On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. In botany, seed is an undeveloped plant embryo and food reserve enclosed in a protective outer covering. Other plants such as ferns, mosses and liverworts, do not have seeds and use water-dependent means to propagate themselves. In seed stockers flowering plants, the ovary ripens into a fruit which contains the seed and serves to disseminate it.

Many structures commonly referred to as “seeds” are actually dry fruits. Sunflower seeds are sometimes sold commercially while still enclosed within the hard wall of the fruit, which must be split open to reach the seed. The first land plants evolved around 468 million years ago, they reproduced using spores. Angiosperm seeds are produced in a hard or fleshy structure called a fruit that encloses the seeds for protection in order to secure healthy growth.

Seed production in natural plant populations varies widely from year to year in response to weather variables, insects and diseases, and internal cycles within the plants themselves. Over a 20-year period, for example, forests composed of loblolly pine and shortleaf pine produced from 0 to nearly 5. 5 million sound pine seeds per hectare. After fertilization, the ovules develop into the seeds.