Just like an egg yolk and its albumen.

These tomato seeds display a primordial form which Mother Earth invented and then has used countless times, for myriad and diverse life forms. Clearly, the “egg” is an excellent way to bring forward the next generation.

It has been wondered if early life forms were similar: a primitive center of cognition and sensation floating within a type of egg-sack, itself floating in the first oceans.

In the garden and in Nature around here, several renditions of this design are seen. Chinese Elms (now naturalized to the area) put out millions of circular white paper shapes with a single, tiny black seed at the center. Mountain Spinach, orache, does the same but a hundred or so rather than millions.

When harvesting cucumber seeds, one sees that each single seed in the rows of seeds is caressed in gelatin. As the seeds dry for storage, some of the gelatin is subsumed back into the seed and the rest evaporates. Summer squash and zucchini seeds are similar. Winter squashes and pumpkins, however, don’t look like they have a “sack” of nutrients, yet when the seeds are dried, each has a thin coat of dried film, like dried egg white.

But, as I harvest seeds each season, it is the tomato seeds that make me giggle. Each a perfect egg; their “albumen” the color of the tomato juice and flesh of the tomato.

Once Mother Nature and Mother Earth landed on this design, it was replicated; and to this day, all fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds lay eggs. All insects lay eggs. Plus, for every mammal, including humans, the egg design is used. In all of these cases, the eggs lay infertile until sperm activates gestation. But for plants, the so-called male and female exchange – called pollination – is what creates the seed.

As you garden or stroll in Nature, notice the primordial designs. We are surrounded by such wonders!