If vegetables don't have seeds, how do they reproduce?

Question

This all started with a question about tomatoes. They say a tomato is a fruit because it has seeds, but isn't the centre of green beans filled with seeds? Cucumbers seem to have seeds. Also, if a fruit has seeds, what about bananas?

Answer 1

The vegetable itself does not have seeds.
The plants they come from go to seed.
If you let a carrot, or cucumber, or radish grow too
long, it 'goes to seed' as they say on the farm.
A cluster of seeds usually sprout out of the top
of the plant for the next set of crops.

Answer 2

( 1.)
Your confusion is due to the economic "local competitive advantage" where the best seed producing areas for Brassica lets say is in India and China. (due to pronounced dry season , cheap labour , hard lands.)

Therefore the West do not grow their own Brassica seeds where possible , because of labour and land area constrains.

( 2.)
Vegetables are from seeds , also because it is much more difficult ,, and expensive to handle vegetative planting material. The "plough" called a "seed drill" is a seeding plough. With one exception , the potato drill (planter).

( 3.)
There may be a 3rd reason where if the vegetable begins to flower ,, (or bolt)(or harden) the marketability becomes useless for the vegetable.. And that seeds gotten as a by-product is not consistant enough to be economic. (Whereby if you had planted ,, you actually loose money on this crop.)(Farmers are very , very picky with seeds , because every crop batch is a gamble ,, or as good.)

** Maybe also if a farmer tried to make his own seed ,, he cannot confidently control the "pest load " on the land ,, whereby the pest may winter with more critical mass ,, to bear early in the season. (Which also makes one very unpopular in the community !! )(Because pests habours on his land !!)

* Vegetables have seed. But , for agronomic reasons ,, the supply is niched and not very visible.

Answer 3

Actually there are vegetables without seeds, for example the banana it doesn't have seed.

I forget the technical term, however lots of roots are used as vegetables right, so many of them grow without seed and only with a portion of its body dig the earth and put them in which gives birth to the new plant. Another classical example is Sugar cane. Where we just cut a part of it and burry it into the mud to get a new sugar cane plant.

Answer 4

You are wrong vegetables DO have seeds.

Look at carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, (not tomatoes its a fruit), radishes etc...

They may not have seeds in the usual sense like apples and such but as they grow they will produce seeds. It is just that they are harvested before getting to the seed producing stage.

Answer 5

Technically, a "vegetable" is the root, stem, or leaf of a plant. But, that plant also produces flowers=fruits with seeds.

Answer 6

Bananas do have seeds. They have been bred out of the bananas you now buy. The remnants can be seen as dark brown smudges within the bananas. Wild bananas (plantains) still have seeds.

Answer 7

Some have seeds within the plant, like the tomato. But others, like radishes, reproduce when they flower. We left radishes to flower in our garden and they came back with more radishes the next year.

Answer 8

Vegetables have seeds, you're just eating the plant itself, and not the fruit.

Answer 9

In the superstore, fruits are usually picked out much too soon. Some are rocks, many are bitter. Some of the fresh vegetables are right (zucchini, onions, garlic, lettuce, greens, and a few others) so I'd have to go with vegetables.

Answer 10

The answer you are looking for without someone mocking you because they wrongly believe that all plants reproduce by seeds is none other than VEGITATIVE REPRODUCTION. Another means other than seeds would be SPORES.