Forming Seeds

     Wheat. By now you know this on sight, I'm sure. (My regulars, anyhow) It's beginning to change. Day by day, ever so slightly it gets a little less green. It's drying, and using a great deal of it's resources to form it's seeds.

     Here, I have dissected several kernels of wheat that were forming. The outer shell, which you can see in various stages on the left, forms first. This fills with a liquid that looks like, and mostly is, water. The fluid takes on more and more color (white) until it forms a sort of goo, like you can see (kind of) on the end of the knife there. It gets more and more solid, forming into the shape of the seed like gelatin in a mold. Though the seed will be much smaller than the shell at first, it will continue to grow until it fills the shell. On the top, second from the right is a fully formed but as of yet immature kernel. Just to the right of that is an anther. I'm not sure why I put it there, maybe for scale. Why not.

     With increased development comes increased food value. This fact is not lost on nature. As you can see above, critters will pluck the forming (and formed seeds) out of the heads. Birds, ants, rodents, pretty much everything likes to eat wheat kernels.
     As the seeds develop and dry, the wheat fields change from green to a sort of yellowish. I find is somewhat strange that there really isn't a common word for it. Anyhow, I'll show you later on. The important thing is the change in color signals that the first of the harvests is rapidly approaching. And while a year long cycle may seem like a long one, it's already half over. (In respects to timeline, anyhow.)