Sept. 17, 2003

Go for a Sock Walk

Lots of plants need animals to spread their seeds. Some seeds are inside yummy fruit. Animals and birds eat the food. Then the seeds pass right through their digestive systems and end up on the ground again, somewhere else. Some seeds catch in animals' fur. They get spread around as the animals move from place to place. Put on some woolly socks and see how many seeds you can pick up.

What You Need:

• a large pair of woolly socks, the fuzzier the better
• a park or field to walk in
• a summer or fall day, when weeds have ripe seeds
• a magnifying glass

What to Do:

1. Pull the socks on over your shoes.
2. Go for a walk through the weeds in a field or park.
3. Take off the socks and see what seeds you've picked up. Are some seeds hard to pry off? Take a look at them through a magnifying glass to see what kind of "hooks" they have.
4. When you get home, you might like to try planting your seeds to see what kinds of plants come up. Egg cartons make good planters—you can put a different kind of seed in each place. Put your planter in a sunny spot and water it regularly. A library book about wild plants can help you figure out what you've got in your sock walk garden.

From Looking at the Environment by David Suzuki with Barbara Hehner. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 1991. Used with authors' permission (http://www.davidsuzuki.org ).

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