Phytomelanin (phytomelan) is a black, inert, organic material that forms a crust-like covering of some seeds, commonly found in Asparagales and Asteraceae but uncommon in other taxonomic groupings. Phytomelanin is found in most families of the Asparagales (although not in Orchidaceae). It is mechanically hard and forms a resistant substance, although it is more pliable in the developing fruit, hardening later. Chemically it appears to be a polyvinyl aromatic alcohol, and is thought to be exuded from the hypodermis. It appears to provide resistance to insect predators and desiccation.^[1][2][3]

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (February 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 5,068 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Fitomelanina]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|es|Fitomelanina}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.