The Largest Seed in the World

Since I wrote about the smallest seed in the world ( click here for that ), I thought it only fitting that I would also tell you of the largest seed in the world, which is the Coco de Mer, or "sea coconut". With the Latin name of Lodoicea maldivica , it is the seed of a palm tree native to the Seychelles islands, which are located in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of the African continent.

Unlike the orchid Aerides odorata, which is found throughout the Asian continent (although endangered), the Coco de Mer is only found on two of the islands in the Seychelles, having gone extinct from the three others on which it was formerly found. Unfortunately, the Coco de Mer is also on IUCN's Red List as a species in danger of extinction.

The Coco de Mer can grow to be 44 pounds, which is the typical average weight of a six-year-old child, so that's a very big seed! And the Coco de Mer seed takes longer than a child to get to that weight, too: it can take up to ten years for the Coco de Mer seed to mature! So there you have it; now you know about the biggest seed in the world and the smallest seed in the world. 

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_coco_de_mer_growth.jpg

The Smallest Seed in the World

There are 300,000 species of seed-bearing plants in the world that we know of. Among these, the smallest seed belongs to an orchid known as Aerides odorata . This flowering plant lives in areas across China, Southeast Asia, and the Phillippines, preferring a rainforest-type habitat. The seed of the Aerides odorata is only 0.2 millimeters in length. That may be a little hard to picture, so here is more of a visual: It takes over three million Aerides odorata seeds to make up one gram--3,300,000, to be exact! The seed is truly miniscule--almost microscopic!

Unfortunately, due to habitat loss, this fragile orchid is on the IUCN Red List of endangered species, so we need to try to do all we can to prevent more destruction of native subtropical and tropical forests, or the beautiful orchid with the world's smallest seeds may become extinct.

And now click here for the world's BIGGEST seed!

Image credit https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerides_odorata0.jpg