Seed Dispersal

     As we all know, plants can not travel.  Where they sprout is where they stay.  So why are certain kinds of vegetation seemingly everywhere?  They must get around somehow, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania, for example.  They spread across the countryside by virtue of their seeds, on the wind, in birds' digestive tracts, on animal fur and by being stored by certain critters to be eaten in winter. 
     Dandelions, thistles and milkweeds are types of plants that produce small, brownish seeds, each one with a white parachute that carries its burden away on the wind, often for long distances.  It's neat to watch those beautiful, fluffy parachutes blowing off the parent stalks with their dangling cargo.  And the seeds that land on soil, and are not consumed by mice and birds, sprout into new plants.
     Many kinds of trees and shrubbery have a different strategy for traveling over the landscape.  They produce pretty berries, many kinds of which are brightly colored, allowing birds to see them to ingest them during fall and winter.  Birds, including flocks of American robins, eastern bluebirds, starlings, cedar waxwings, yellow-rumped warblers and other species, eat the berries of spice bushes, multiflora rose, Tartarian honeysuckle, barberry, yews and hollies, all of which are red, and other kinds of woody-barked plants.  Those birds digest the pulp of the berries, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings, often miles away from the parent vegetation.  Some of the seeds, when not eaten by rodents, sprout into new plants that, eventually, produce more berries for birds and rodents to eat.
     Stick tights from tick-trefoil plants, beggar ticks from bur-marigolds, cockleburs and other kinds of prickly seeds stick to the fur of medium-sized to large mammals such as foxes, raccoons and white-tailed deer as those critters push through dense vegetation near the ground.  Eventually those animals tire of those irritating seeds and pull them out of their fur with their teeth and claws.  The seeds drop to the ground and sprout, thus spreading their kind across the landscape.
     Blue jays and a small variety of squirrels bury a diversity of acorns and other nuts in the ground in autumn.  Those nuts are stored by those creatures to be dug up and eaten in winter when food is scarce and buried under blankets of snow.  The animals must remember where they buried the nuts to retrieve them so easily.  But if a jay or squirrel is killed by a predator, the nuts it buried will not be consumed in winter, but sprout and grow during the following spring and summer, often far from the parent vegetation.  Whole woodlands have been started by deceased jays and squirrels.
     Nature is interesting and all aspects of it work together for the benefit of all species.  We only need to step outside, almost wherever we may be, to experience seed dispersal at work and other intrigues of nature.