Seedless describes fruits or plants that have been specially grown to produce little or no seeds. When you bite into a seedless watermelon or pop a seedless grape into your mouth, you can enjoy the fruit without stopping to spit out seeds every few bites.

Most seedless fruits don't happen naturally. Scientists and farmers use careful breeding techniques to create plants that grow fruit without developing mature seeds. Seedless grapes, for example, come from vines that have been cultivated over many generations to produce tiny, barely noticeable seed remnants instead of the hard seeds you'd find in wild grapes.

Some seedless plants, like seedless oranges, can still reproduce through cuttings: farmers take a piece of the plant and grow a new one from it, like making a copy. This way, even though the fruit has no seeds, the farmer can still grow more trees.

The word can also describe things that naturally lack noticeable seeds, like certain cucumbers or special tomato varieties, though these are less common. When you see “seedless” on a package at the grocery store, it's usually a sign that someone put considerable thought and effort into making that fruit more convenient to eat.