Germinating Seeds

Here's a quick an simple way to view a seed germinating.

All it took was kitchen towel, a straight glass, two sunflower seeds and some water.

Take 4 or 5 sheets of kitchen towel, slightly damp and roll into a cylinder. We're going to put this into the glass.

On the side of the kitchen towel, where it would be about 3/4 of the way up the glass, put the seed. We put two in, on opposite sides.

Now, place the kitchen towel into the glass and fill the bottom with water up to a depth of about 2cm.

At this point the glass was put on a shelf and left alone apart from topping up the water once the kitchen towel fully absorbed it.

After 4 days a root appeared and headed down very quickly, over 2cm a day.
We had placed one seed point up and the other point down. This had no discernible effect as the root appeared more from the side.

Then after another 2 days, the leaf came out.

Here it is, just before I planted out into a pot

The seed itself required water, warmth and oxygen to germinate. By keeping it damp, but not submerged, the seed took in a large amount of water to allow it to soften and swell the coating as well as trigger the internal metabolism.