Rob Kesseler is a visual arts professor and artist. Since 2001, he has been working with microscopic plant material at London's Royal Botanic Gardens.

Wolfgang Stuppy is a seed morphologist for the Millennium Seed Bank at London's Royal Botanic Gardens. His work furthers the bank's efforts to safeguard 24,000 plant species from around the globe.

Seeds: Time Capsules of Life

There is a magical appeal, rooted in childhood, in watching seeds develop: the acorn in its neatly fitting cup or the polished, rich brown surface of the horse chestnut as it emerges from its spiny shell. These sensuous forms draw us closer to nature: temporal touchstones rolled between fingers, stuffed into pockets or left to slowly shrivel on windowsills. Then there is the poppy, with its flame red petals that quickly fall as the fruit ripens into its familiar capsule, the crop of seeds trapped inside, rattling like miniature maracas until the cap lifts and they are eventually dispersed.

Holding a small seed in one's hand it is sometimes difficult to comprehend that given the right conditions a complex and beautiful plant will emerge from it. Seeds are the beginning and end of the life cycle of plants, carriers of the genetic codes that will ensure successful propagation and continuation of the species. Their resilience is renowned: seeds taken from dried herbarium samples have been successfully germinated over two hundred years after they were collected. Their diversity of form and scale is as extensive as the plants from which they derive, from the giant coco de mer weighing up to twenty kilos to the almost dust-like seeds of the orchid family where one gram can contain more than 2 million seeds.

Until the seventeenth century the study of plants had largely been for medicinal or horticultural purposes, but taking advantage of the new compound microscope developed by chemist and physicist Robert Hooke, pioneering botanists such as Nehemiah Grew and John Ray were among the first to describe the structure and reproductive mechanisms of seeds. Fuelled with this new knowledge, a new breed of explorers and plant hunters were bringing back to Europe exotic flowers and plants to be cultivated by a growing number of botanists and plantsmen. This fuelled a competitive passion for growing flowering plants and subsequently for the gardens in which to display them, leading to a demand for ever more exotic varieties to fill the burgeoning hothouses and gardens of the nobility.

This growing passion laid the foundation for a more systematic approach to the collection and scientific study of plants with the creation of Botanic Gardens. In addition to living plants that miraculously survived the trials of being transported thousands of miles across land and sea, increasingly the collecting and trading of seeds became more commonplace. Today this has evolved into a multimillion pound industry to satisfy the demands of a highly educated population of garden enthusiasts. But more importantly, as environmental concerns have grown and the importance of the preservation of plant habitats for bio-diversity has been recognized, a network of highly trained seed collectors with local knowledge of endangered species has emerged. Their precious harvest is distributed among the many centers for botanical research around the world. In recognition of the urgent need for a concerted approach. the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, created the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex in 2000. The Millennium Seed Bank Project has set itself the daunting but vital task of collecting and conserving by 2010 over 24,000 species -- of the world's seed-bearing flora.

In the eighteenth century, artists and scientists worked closely together to examine and portray the many complexities of life. In a revival of this collaborative spirit this book reunites the worlds of botanical science and art to reveal and celebrate the astounding diversity and complexity of seeds. As we worked together we marveled over the specimens in front of us and through our collaboration we hope to show you things you may have seen but never had the opportunity to examine in minute detail. In the natural world seeds are dispersed on the wind, carried on the backs of animals or eaten by birds and other animals to be deposited far from the original plant. They are dispersed by humans too -- as food transported across vast distances, as decorative items of jewelry, or accidentally when stuck to clothing. Through this book we hope to extend the strategy of dispersal to a new audiences.