Can an avocado plant drop it's seed (shell), and still grow?

Question

I am trying to sprout (germinate?) 2 avocado seeds (toothpick and ziplock paper towel methods), and I bought a small avocado plant grafted with Hass variety, so I can make my own graftings in the future and have, hopefully, 2 or 3 trees.

When I got the package, the pot it came was the same, small one, that was specified in the add and it had all the roots around it. But the strangest thing was that there was no avocado seed. I cleaned the roots so I would plant it in a big pot and still I was not able to see the avocado seed.

Pictures: top, the avocado plants in the add, bot, the avocado plant I received (it was in the same small pot and full of soil, I put what I could in the bigger pot, and cleaned the rest so the roots would be more loose, because they were all dry and entangled around each other).

I contacted the vendor and he assured me that it was an avocado plant (I am no expert but the leaves look indeed similar, and the body of the plant) and that "sometimes the seed can drop when manipulating the plant, nothing extraordinary". I have searched everywhere for information about avocado plants that end up growing without seed, but all I get are results about seedless' avocados (to eat).

I guess there really is no need to not send the right plant and confirm it as well, if it's not true. I am no expert so I cannot know for sure. So: Can this happen? Is the avocado seed ("bone" or shell) only the "starter" for the real seed, providing it with nutrients but it's not extremely necessary once the seed has germinated, sprouted and become decently big (in this case, 30cm aprox)?

Answer 1

This is not really specific to avocado.

Any seed (with a few exceptions in the oddballs like orchids) is a source of "starter nutrients" for the plant, and once the plant has put out roots and leaves, that becomes less important, and eventually the stored resorces are used up anyway, so the remains of the seed are not at all important to the plant after that point and will be discarded.

If the remains of the seed are dislodged early due to transplanting, and the plant has sufficient roots and leaves to go on making its own food and growing, it's still the plant it started as. If they are dislodged or shed once they are done contributing what they had stored, the plant had no further use for them anyway.

If you are (as it appears) interested in actually growing avocados, I would suggest starting your seeds in soil or potting mix or damp sand/vermiculite/peat (which is a version of potting mix), rather than putting them through the nice for children to observe, but highly unnatural sprouting in water that's ever so popular, so they then have to grow different roots adapted to soil when you finally decide to give them actual dirt to grow in.

You may also need an additional different avocado to graft on; your plan appears to be 3 clones of one Hass cultivar, but some avocados are self-sterile, and 3 clones are all "self" in that light. You can either assume it might be a problem and take steps to avoid it, or you can wait and see if you get lots of flowers and no fruit and solve it after that point by grafting on another cultivar.