After the post about the unexpected sunflowers I got a lot of questions about seeds and flowers and the like.
(Incidentally, my plans for roasted sunflower seeds never came to fruition {Ha ha, fruition, how appropriate}. There were several reasons for this , the main one being that the seeds never got very big. Maybe about half the size of normal sunflower seeds. Also, there were only two flowers so there weren't that many seeds in the end. Also I was lazy. Mainly I was lazy. It just didn't seem worth the effort to harvest, dry them, look up how to cook them and do so when I could go a few blocks and get a huge bag of ready to eat sunflower seeds for a couple of bucks. And in a variety of flavors like ranch and bacon. [Really and truly. They have bacon flavored sunflower seeds. To me they just taste like salt though, so they aren't my favorite.]
Anyway, back to the seeds. For lack of creativity on my part (I blame it on my un-stimulating job but it could be something I was born with. Or without, I suppose) I'm just going to list the questions and answer them.
Q1: How do you tell the difference between types of seeds?
A1: Well if I knew the answer to that I would be eating watermelon right now, wouldn't I? However, since the mishap with the sunflowers I have since learned that there are two other ways to identify seeds. The first is that they tend to look like the plant they grow into.
Case in Point
Mmmm. Gotta get some of those. However, the most reliable way is to consult an expert (read: not me), either a gardener or a book or maybe the internet. Whichever you prefer.
Qs 2&3: Can you eat raw/uncooked seeds and can you plant cooked seeds?
A: Yes and no, respectively. That is to say that, yes, you can eat raw seeds (with caution. More on that later) but you can't plant cooked seeds. Well, I guess you could plant them, but don't expect anything to grow from it. (Except maybe weeds. They seem to be the only things that are subject to spontaneous generation.)
Subjecting seeds to high heat (aka cooking) destroys their reproductive abilities, so planting cooked seeds would only be worth your time if you wanted to fertilize the soil.
As for the caution in eating raw seeds, some of them contain high levels of phosphorous, which through a complex physiological process that I won't go into detail about (meaning, I don't know ;) causes calcium loss in the body. (Actually, I vaguely recall something like that from physiology. That's not saying much though. Physiology itself is a vague recollection for me.)
Q3: Are there sunflowers without petals?
A: No. I have never seen one and couldn't find an example of one anywhere so I am making a cataclysmic decision that they don't exist. I mean, the first thing people generally notice about a flower is its color. Which is found on its petals. So if it has no petals it isn't really a flower, right? Sounds plausible, no? So that's what we'll go with.
However, there are a few flowers I found that if you squinted real hard and had really bad allergies and maybe some optic nerve damage you might mistake for a sunflower without petals.
Example B
(And the most likely, in my opinion)
This is called a yellow cone flower. It looks a lot like a sunflower and if it lost its petals I think it might just look like a sunflower without petals. Just maybe.
Q4: What kinds of garden plants grow in Logan?
A: The person who asked this question isn't going to live in Logan after all so I am assuming he/she doesn't really care anymore, therefore I am not going to answer this question. Ha Ha Ha!
I will tell you though, that a hardiness zone is a geographically-defined area in which a specific type of plant is capable of growing and that a certain college town in northeastern Idaho is in hardiness zone 4. The zone number depends on the harshness of the winter and a 4 means an extreme winter low of -30 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit : ) So you can look up a particular plant's number and as long as it can survive that kind of cold then it will thrive in your area. Too bad people don't come with those numbers too.
Well, we have reached the end of this post and I have pretty much exhausted my knowledge of plants, so if you have anymore questions, you'll have to askSomeoneelse :)
Qs 2&3: Can you eat raw/uncooked seeds and can you plant cooked seeds?
A: Yes and no, respectively. That is to say that, yes, you can eat raw seeds (with caution. More on that later) but you can't plant cooked seeds. Well, I guess you could plant them, but don't expect anything to grow from it. (Except maybe weeds. They seem to be the only things that are subject to spontaneous generation.)
Subjecting seeds to high heat (aka cooking) destroys their reproductive abilities, so planting cooked seeds would only be worth your time if you wanted to fertilize the soil.
As for the caution in eating raw seeds, some of them contain high levels of phosphorous, which through a complex physiological process that I won't go into detail about (meaning, I don't know ;) causes calcium loss in the body. (Actually, I vaguely recall something like that from physiology. That's not saying much though. Physiology itself is a vague recollection for me.)
Q3: Are there sunflowers without petals?
A: No. I have never seen one and couldn't find an example of one anywhere so I am making a cataclysmic decision that they don't exist. I mean, the first thing people generally notice about a flower is its color. Which is found on its petals. So if it has no petals it isn't really a flower, right? Sounds plausible, no? So that's what we'll go with.
However, there are a few flowers I found that if you squinted real hard and had really bad allergies and maybe some optic nerve damage you might mistake for a sunflower without petals.
Example A
This is a sunflower that has lost its petals. It had them once but they fell off. This has been known to happen from time to time and when it does people might think that it never had them to begin with. Hence, the petal-less sunflower.
This is a sunflower that has lost its petals. It had them once but they fell off. This has been known to happen from time to time and when it does people might think that it never had them to begin with. Hence, the petal-less sunflower.Example B
(And the most likely, in my opinion)
This is called a yellow cone flower. It looks a lot like a sunflower and if it lost its petals I think it might just look like a sunflower without petals. Just maybe.Example C
This is called a pineapple weed and its a stretch. But again, optic nerve damage can do funny things to your eyes, so maybe somebody could mistake this for a sunflower without petals.
Q4: What kinds of garden plants grow in Logan?
A: The person who asked this question isn't going to live in Logan after all so I am assuming he/she doesn't really care anymore, therefore I am not going to answer this question. Ha Ha Ha!
I will tell you though, that a hardiness zone is a geographically-defined area in which a specific type of plant is capable of growing and that a certain college town in northeastern Idaho is in hardiness zone 4. The zone number depends on the harshness of the winter and a 4 means an extreme winter low of -30 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit : ) So you can look up a particular plant's number and as long as it can survive that kind of cold then it will thrive in your area. Too bad people don't come with those numbers too.
Well, we have reached the end of this post and I have pretty much exhausted my knowledge of plants, so if you have anymore questions, you'll have to askSomeoneelse :)
