What does Genesis 1:12 mean?

This verse nearly repeats the language of the previous verse. God commanded something to happen on earth: the development of plants and trees. This verse describes this very thing happening, exactly as God declared it. Plants and trees of many kinds came into being, and each of them carried the seed that would cause the next generation of those specific plants and trees to grow on their own.

Another key fact to take from this account is that God built reproduction into His creation from the very start. His intent is clear: He would not create the world over and over again. He would create it all once. He would make it good, and He would build into His good creation the ability to keep recreating itself according the kind—of plant, in this case—which it was.

Genesis 1 provokes various debates and conversations about how and when God created, and how or if that creation has changed since the initial creation. What is clear is that the Bible intends us to understand that God, and God alone, made living things with the intent of them reproducing, from the very beginning.