I’m on a three month hiatus from my horticulture course for the summer holidays, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped noticing all the different, fascinating scientific things I learnt about in the classroom when I see them around the garden.

One of the terms that was new to me in the course was a “dehiscent fruit.” Which, in brief, means a plant which creates seeds inside a pod and then opens the pod to expel them, in some way, onto the ground.

(The word “fruit” doesn’t have to refer to a fruit in the way we think of apples, pears, plums etc. In fact, confusingly, an apple and a pear are not even true horticultural fruits, but rather “false fruits” due to the part of the plant that has swelled to create the fruit…)

Thus it is that the innocuous looking little seed pod on my geranium, in the photo above, one night pulled up all its side into these amazing curls, of the photo below, and flung its seeds out into my flower bed.

Next year, perhaps I can set an overnight video camera to catch it in action…

Joining in with the August Break.

Related articles:

• See the photo for each day of August in my August break category.