Used mainly in gardening or biology to refer to young plants.

Botanical Term

Can be used metaphorically to refer to the beginning stage of anything.

Metaphorical Use

Implies something needs care, like a young plant needs sunlight and water.

Nurturing Required

Used to subtly indicate someone's lack of experience in a particular area.

Inexperience Implication

Often used to suggest that with time and experience, the person will grow.

Potential for Growth

More common in informal speech to describe beginners or newcomers.

Colloquial Use

 but because of the way traits are inherited, all of the seedlings produced will have different sets of genes and characteristics. This means that to achieve a desired quality, it takes a lot of offspring, not to mention patience on the breeder's part. When a seedling does bear fruit with the desired qualities,

Why are there so many...

 Once the sugars enter the fungus, they travel along the hyphae through pores between cells or through special hollow transporter hyphae. The fungus absorbs some of the sugars, but some travels on and enters the roots of a neighboring tree, a seedling that grows in the shade and has less opportunity

The secret language of...

 future at all the trees with the green bands are here to drop seed for seedlings and also to provide disperse light so those seeds can germinate and the seedling development we have to balance all of those uses with what we know will do to perpetuate the forest in the future

Sustainable Logging PIPE...

 suggesting that they had beefed up their anti-insect defenses. Even moving the air from above a clipped plant to another one made the second plant more insect-resistant. These airborne cues increase the likelihood of seedling survival,

Can plants talk to each...

 extraordinary individuals from around the world to participate in the Ted community both by coming to conferences and being part of an ongoing social network throughout the year the Fellows Program allows a kind of a seedling

The TED Fellows program

 not a single seedling of the tropical hardwood trees has grown up because the climatic triggers have disappeared. All the seeds get eaten. So now we do the monitoring on the inside -- from towers, satellites, ultralights.

Willie Smits: How to...

 regular beach sand. Fossilized coral. So a lot of people ask me, "How did you get started?" Well, we got started in what we call the indoor biofuels lab. It's a seedling lab. We have 26 different species of halophytes,

Bilal Bomani: Plant...

 Peseshet explains her fail-safe pregnancy plant two one barley, one emmer. Then, urinate on the seeds every day. If the plants grow, she’s pregnant. A barley seedling predicts a baby boy, while emmer foretells a girl.

A day in the life of an...

 So I went back to school, and I studied my other world. You see, scientists had just discovered in the laboratory in vitro that one pine seedling root could transmit carbon to another pine seedling root.

How trees talk to each...

 this looks like devastation the grass has been burnt away and so have the seedling trees but because grasses store energy

Seedling