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When you're building an airplane or a sky scraper or a highway bridge, you'd better get the numbers right. It's the only way to rest easy when factors we cannot control take over—earthquakes, storms, meteors, personal injury lawyers. America runs on numbers, precise numbers, and it's the accuracy of these numbers that keep us safe and strong and leading the world. Whether it is a nuclear submarine or an eye surgery laser, effective design must consider the numerical consequences—tensile strength, machine tolerances, internal and external pressures, damage awards by sympathetic juries.
We love numbers, especially if we happen to be of the engineering persuasion.
Then there are seeds—where the only sure numbers are when you count them one by one. Doesn't do any good to know there are 15,000 seeds in the jar unless there is a prize offered for the most accurate guess. Perhaps it is our devotion to the numbers that gives us a level of comfort when we can specify "X" or "Z" in a contract and then measure whether compliance has been achieved.
Then there are seeds. Purity and germination numbers turn out to be only approximations of what can be expected of a given lot of seed. Normal variation in germination can run ten to fifty percent. Even careful controls cannot guarantee how seeds will perform. Each seed represents an incredibly complex biological system which can—without seeming reason—burst forth into a healthy, beautiful plant or just sit there in complete disregard of contract requirements and the legal profession.
Testing should help us weed out these defiant ones but all testing can make us sure of is that consistent analysis is an elusive goal, that resampling the lot will do little to allay frustration but produce a lot more numbers.

A Solution
We'd like to see seed specifications lean toward identifying the proper genus and specie for the location. Calling for the right ecotypes—seeds that fit the soil and climate of a site—will do more to assure success of the installation than anything else. Pure live seed (PLS) count may be certifiable but until each plant has taken hold in the soil of its new home, even live seed may not produce desired results. Contracts that call for "industry standard" purity and germination will save money and frustration—maybe legal bills too.

Read about Seeding and Hydroseeding.

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