Why Do Multiple Seedlings Sprout From a Beet Seed?

Have you ever noticed that, unlike the smooth-textured surfaces of seeds such as spinach, radish, cucumber, and squash, the seeds of beets are rough and crinkled, almost like someone just jammed a bunch of seeds together?

That’s because beet seeds are a bunch of seeds jammed in one seed.

Beet seeds are multigerm seeds. (Quick botany lesson: The germ is the reproductive part of a seed — the embryo — that grows into a new plant.) Multigerm seeds occur when flowers grow in clusters, fused toge...