What exactly are spores?
If you kick a fat puffball at just the right time of year, it will puff out a dusty cloud of perhaps a trillion powdery spores. A few lucky spores will land on rich, moist soil and grow into giant fungi just like the parent puffball. The spores, however, are very different from true seeds. Seeds, even tiny mustard seeds, are big enough to be seen. Spores are tiny specks usually too small to be seen without a magnifying lens. But both seeds and spores can carry on life to a new generation just like their parents. It is natural to think that spores are really seeds, perhaps just smaller than the usual seeds of the plant world. But this is not so. There are basic differences between them. Though spores are smaller, they come in more varieties and greater numbers. What’s more, many spores can perform other duties besides handing on life. A seed is a sleeping embryo, a life cell formed by the union of male and female cells. When the seed is surrounded by friendly conditions, it divides and
