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article._ ------------------------- > WHERE DID THE FIRST SEED COME FROM? – ALICE, AGE SIX, BEVERLEY, UK Hi Alice. This is a clever question. As I’m sure you know, plants use seeds to

spread their young and make new plants. But plants haven’t always used seeds to do this. Seeds came together bit-by-bit over a really long time, as plants evolved. To understand how this

happened, you need to know that all living things change slowly over time, to get better at surviving in their environment – this process is called evolution. Here’s how it works: when a

such as algae, mosses and ferns, still do. You might have spotted the tiny brownish dots on the underside of fern leaves – these are spores. Spores are different from seeds in a few ways. A

spore is made of just one part – a single cell – while a seed contains many cells, each with different jobs to do. Another difference is that spores only have one parent plant, while seeds

have two. This means that, after a seed starts sprouting, it can grow into a plant, just like its parents. But spores have to work a bit harder: once they’ve travelled away from their parent

plant, they grow into a little green plate of cells, which scientists call a “gametophyte”. Then, two gametophytes must join together, before they can grow into a plant. It’s easier for

gametophytes to join together when its wet – and that’s why plants that use spores usually need to grow in wet places. For example, horsetails are a very ancient type of plant, which like to

grow along lakes, rivers and ponds: they have very strange spores with four “legs” which help them to move and travel further away. THE FIRST SEED Scientists believe that an extinct seed

fern, called _Elksinia polymorpha_, was the first plant to use seeds. This plant had cup-like features, called “cupules”, that would protect the developing seed. These cupules grew along the

plant’s branches. Today, plants with seeds do things a little differently. There are two main types: “angiosperms” and “gymnosperms”. Angiosperms are flowering plants – their seeds develop

inside of fruit, like apples, tomatoes or even rose hips or holly berries. Gymnosperms, such as pine trees, grow their seeds inside a hard cone. THE UPSIDE OF SEEDS Seeds have evolved

because they are better at helping plants to survive than spores are. For example, seeds contain a food source to help the new plant grow. They also have a hard coat, which helps them to

live longer in different conditions: this means plants with seeds can life in lots of different places, from hot, dry deserts to cool, rainy places. Seeds are so good at helping plants to

spread their young that most plant species on Earth today use seeds. ------------------------- _Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to

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question, but we’ll do our best._ ------------------------- _More Curious Kids articles, written by academic experts:_