Seed and succession in plants

For the one who feeds your flocks is also building up the provision for your own life. And then, what is the origin of seeds if not a preparation for your way of living? Besides, many of the things that are still among grasses and garden herbs serve as food for human beings. "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, sowing seed," it says, "according to kind" (Genesis 1:11). So even if some kind of herb differs from others, its benefit comes back to us, and the use of the seeds is set apart for us. The meaning of the words, then, is this: "Let the earth sprout the herb of grass, and seed sowing according to kind." In this way the sequence of the wording can be restored—since the syntax now seems inconsistent—and the necessary order of what nature arranges will be preserved. For first comes sprouting, then the green shoot, then the growth of the grass, then the completion of what grows through the seed. How then, they say, does the text show that everything growing from the earth has seed, when neither reed nor couch grass nor mint, not crocus, not garlic, not sedge, nor countless other kinds of plants appear to produce seed? To this we answer that many of the things growing from the earth have the power of their seeds in the base and the root. Just as the reed, after its yearly growth, sends out from the root a certain shoot having the principle of seed for the future. Countless other plants do the same, all that spread through the ground and possess their succession in their roots. So it is truer than anything that for each thing that grows there is either a seed or some seedlike power existing within it. And this is what "according to kind" means. For the shoot of the reed does not produce an olive tree, but from a reed comes another reed, and from seeds the things related to what was sown spring up. And so what the earth brought forth in the first creation is preserved even until now, the kind being guarded by the sequence of succession. "Let the earth sprout." Consider for me how from a small utterance and so brief a command, the frozen and barren earth suddenly travails and is stirred toward fruit-bearing, as though throwing off a gloomy and mournful garment and clothing herself in a brighter one, rejoicing in her proper ornaments and putting forth the countless kinds of growing things. I want the wonder of creation to be fixed in you more intensely, so that wherever you find yourself, and whatever kind of growing thing you stand beside, you may receive a vivid reminder of the Maker. First, then, when you see the herb of grass and a flower, bring to mind human nature, remembering the image of the wise Isaiah, that "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass" (Isaiah 40:6). For the brevity of life, and the short-lived joy and brightness of human prosperity, has found in the prophet a most fitting image. Today a man flourishes in body, fleshed out by luxury, with his good color blooming from the prime of his age, vigorous and taut and irresistible in impulse; tomorrow this same man is pitiable, either withered by time or dissolved by disease.