Front Range Seed Analysts
1997 Seed Forum Volume 11 Number 3
Reprinted from:
Newsletter of the Association of
Official Seed Analysts of North
America
June 1930, vol. 4, no. 6, p. 10-11
WHY WE LIKE SEED TESTING
W. E. Benedict Jr. Commercial Laboratories, Washington
D.C.
We are still very fond of eating and also like to have a little something in the way of protection from the elements, especially at certain times of the year. Moreover, there have appeared in our household from time to time various individuals, small and inconsequential at first but rapidly acquiring proportions which must be taken into account, who have inherited to a marked degree this predilection for an inner lining and outer covering. In fact, if anything the predilection for an inner lining seems to be evolving in these newly arrived individuals.
So it becomes necessary that we provide a continuous supply of material suitable for satisfying the requirements of all concerned, which, in these days of specialized effort can only be accomplished by specializing in some effort. In our case, that effort is Seed Testing and that is one reason why we like Seed Testing.
But we would not create the impression that our only reason for liking Seed Testing is the grossly material one of furnishing means and aids to existence. For the person of an investigating or scientific turn of mind there is pleasure in finding out and knowing just what and how much of just what a sample of field seed is composed of, and the more difficult and complex the analysis the greater the pleasure. Who does not get a kick out of separating a lawn grass mixture containing all four Poas and a couple of Agrostis species, to say nothing of some twenty-five or thirty kinds of weed seeds? Then there is the fun of finding and identifying, or trying to identify, new weed seeds and of ascertaining the source of a sample Of seed from its impurities or from the size, shape or color of the seed itself.
And who does not derive fiendish delight in spoiling an otherwise almost perfect test by finding a nice plump dodder seed in the last few grains?
From an aesthetic point of view seeds are a continuous source of delight with their many colors, shapes and surface markings. To mention only a few, there is the intense, bright yellow of freshly harvested and well cleaned white clover, the velvety green of alsike clover and the softer purple and yellow variegations of red clover. Two grasses which we always like to look at are Agrostis vulgaris (especially Colonial bent) with its hazy pinkish tint and Rough-stalked Meadowgrass with its greenish or purplish translucence.
In form there is no chance for monotony as there are always as many shapes of seeds as there are species. Beginning with the spheres of Brassica and vetches we have most of the geometric figures more or less faithfully reproduced as well as hundreds geometry never dreamed of and in surface finish there is everything from the dullness Of dodder to the polish of Polygonum.
For the physiologist, germination is an ever present fountain of interest and investigation and the smell of cucumber sprouts, is in midwinter, a welcome reminder of summer when we don't have to work as hard. Of course, we also have the smell of onions and rotten beans but they only make the cukes and other fragrant sprouts more attractive.