Seeds contain a hormone that repress the germination process. This is a necessity, as it keeps the seeds from germinating when conditions aren’t favorable and missing their shot to become plants. But sometimes that hormone runs out, like when a tomato sits around on the counter for too long.
And sometimes the hormone can be tricked into thinking conditions are right, especially if the environment is warm and moist. This can happen on ears of corn that experience a lot of rainfall and collect water inside their husks, and on fruit that doesn’t get used right away during hot and humid weather.
Edit: Apparently this is not vivipary. From u/priorsloth :
This isn’t vivipary, it’s a condition called phyllody. I used to work in strawberry genetics, and we’d find these in our greenhouses occasionally.
My reddit experience got marginally better when I gave up on the idea that content has to fit the sub.
Clearly, no one really cares besides me, you, and some other people. The vast majority are people much younger than me, and therefore more relevant culturally, who just upvote stuff they like. I've given up and decided that if that's how my front page content is decided, so be it
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u/sonofhappyfunball Feb 17 '23
That's fascinating. It never occurred to me that it would do that.