What do you make of this plant? (f89v)

[-JKP-]

Hey Linda, nice to see you on the forum again. You know, that's actually a great suggestion - wonder why I didn't think of it myself 
The question remains why the green thing is represented with a serrated edge... but the resemblance between the white thing and the nut's shell is dead on.

Many large hard seeds (e.g., nut seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.) will look like that when the first leaf emerges and pushes apart the mouth of the seed. But... new leaves are rarely serrated, they tend to be smooth and then the next set of leaves will have serrations typical to the species of plant so... if the drawing represents a newly emerging leaf, then it is symbolic of the mature plant's leaf, not the first leaf that comes from the seed.

The same with the roots. A newly emerging plant has very little root. The root in the picture is a grown plant.


It doesn't quite look like the various plants that have a spathe and spadix and these plant forms don't have leaves within the spathe. The VMS illustrator can accurately draw a spadix (there are some in the big-plant drawings) and doesn't drawn them like this. It does look more like a leaf (or symbolic leaf of a more mature plant).



When I first saw it, it reminded me of a clam shell, which made me think of the various flowers that look like animal mouths (snap-dragons, pea flowers, etc.). Bean seeds are hard, like nuts, and the flowers have that puffy rounded look. Perhaps it's symbolic of both the seed and the flower at the same time?