WHAT IS THIS?

You are looking at the embryo of a pine tree. This embryo stays inside the seed until germination. Then the embryo grows into a pine tree. The long top parts sticking up in the back are called cotyledons and they store food reserves to help the plant get off to a good start. A few of the cotyledons in the front have been pulled off so that you can see the little mountain of cells in the middle. These cells are the shoot apical meristem and they divide to produce all the stem, branches, leaves and cones of the big pine tree. Can you believe that the tree grows from such a small group of cells?

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