Seed Sorting & Botanical Diversity

Students pair up: one student wears a blindfold while the partner provides a mixed bowl of 4 distinct seed types (e.g., kidney beans, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and split peas).

Without peeking, the blindfolded student uses fingertips alone to analyze shape, smoothness, ridges, and weight, sorting the seeds into 4 separate egg-carton cups within 2 minutes!

Botanists split flowering plants into two major evolutionary lineages based on their seed architecture:

Monocots (Monocotyledons): One single seed leaf inside the seed. Adult leaves feature parallel veins (corn, leeks, onions, native grasses).

Dicots (Dicotyledons): Two seed leaves that split easily in half. Adult leaves have branching net-like veins (beans, peas, squash, cabbage, berries).

Seeds are living organisms respiring at an ultra-slow rate. To keep them viable for years, farmers use the rule of cool and dry storage.

Every 10°F drop in temperature and 1% drop in moisture roughly doubles the lifespan of stored seeds. In Tyonek, clean glass jars placed in cool root cellars protect heritage seeds from mold and rodents.

Industrial seed corporations sell hybrid seeds that cannot reproduce true-to-type, forcing growers to repurchase seeds every spring.

By saving open-pollinated seeds from the best-performing Tyonek plants each autumn, our community develops hyper-localized crop varieties resilient to coastal Cook Inlet weather.

Students log their blindfold sorting accuracy rates and create an anatomical sketch comparing a monocot vs dicot seed.

Teams reflect on how understanding seed shapes informs proper planting depth in the spring garden.