K-apple spreads seeds

By Nam Sang-so

There is a beautiful road named Palisades Interstate Parkway (PIP) along the west bank of the Hudson River. The southern terminus of the route is the George Washington Bridge. It's named for the New Jersey Palisades, a line of cliffs rising along the banks of the river.

And there used to be the Tappan Zee Bridge that crossed the Hudson. It was built between 1952 and 1966 while the United States was busy protecting South Korea from becoming a communist country in the Korean War. In order to save money for the war effort, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey selected World War II military technology to build an economical bridge. The temporary structure was replaced by a modern cabled bridge named after Governor Mario M. Cuomo in 2017.

On school days from 2004 to 2008, I shuttled my grandson on the PIP, crossing either the George Washington Bridge or the Tappan Zee Bridge twice a day as the boy's school was located on the New York side. We lived on the west bank of the Hudson River.

Often, I brought a Korean apple, purchased at a Korean grocery store, for my grandson to snack on as we traveled home in the car. The boy bit it a few times, slid down the window, and tossed away its core over the shoulder of the parkway. “It's against the parkway law,” I said. “A lot of kids do that, and Callahan did, too,” the boy said. Callahan is a police detective portrayed by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies.

Later I spotted small apple trees growing here and there among the bushes and woods along the parkway. The boy was right, there had been others who had tossed away their leftover apples.

An apple has no hard shell at its core. It holds its seeds without any protective cover which makes it easier for those seeds to germinate in any soil with moisture. The seeds of peaches or plums, on the other hand, are well protected by a hard shell. I imagine that apples probably knew that humans would grow trees to eat fruit but not the core that contains the seeds, and toss the core any old place far away from the parent trees.

The apple didn't require a propeller-like blade that is seen in maple trees?to send their seeds airborne riding on aerodynamic force.

Korean apples are tasty, and have successfully spread their seeds onto fertile soil around the globe.

Every plant on this planet wants to spread its DNA as much and as far away as possible covering the whole earth with greenery, flowers and vegetation.

Now, even China's lunar exploration program, as was reported in January 2019, has germinated cotton and potato seeds on the far side of the moon ― potatoes for a food supply and cotton for clothing for astronauts and tourists from the green planet.

The writer (

sangsonam@gmail.com

) is a retired architect/engineer.