Buttonwood Sycamore Tree Seed

Jan 16, 2015 • 10:44 AM UTC

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codygeary

Cody Geary is a Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow working at the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center at Aarhus University, advised by Ebbe Andersen. Cody works on developing RNA nanostructures that fold up from a single strand of RNA. The designs, dubbed 'RNA Origami', are being developed in collaboration with Paul Rothemund at Caltech and Ebbe Andersen at Aarhus University.

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I found some little hairy seeds on the ground today, and I decided to see what the hairs look like up close.
According the “Seed Dispersal” book I found in Project Gutenburg , the seeds are from a Buttonwood Sycamore Tree. Here is the identification image from the book:

Buttonwood Sycamore Seed, from Seed Dispersal, by William J. Beal (found in Project Gutenburg). The seeds form in a puffball fruit, that when is ready sends the seeds flying all over. The hairs around the seeds help the seeds to travel further by wind dispersal.

Here is a picture of the seeds that I found. Now lets take a closer look:

The microstructures of the seed’s hairs remind me a little bit of bamboo.

Buttonwood Sycamore Tree Seed

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