All plants begin life as a single seed.
A tiny, almost insignificant piece of living matter. That, given the proper conditions, can produce a plant whose size is totally out of proportion to the seed that it developed from. For example, take the apple tree. In my hand, I'm holding the seed I took from an apple out of my kitchen. But it has the potential of developing into a tree maybe twenty feet tall, that during its life time could produce thousands of apples, and countless numbers of new seeds.