An explanation is sought from the view of interatomic forces and interactions between seed crystal and the molten target material.
Crystallization depends upon nucleation and growth with nucleation being the role of a seed. I am most familiar with crystallizations of proteins and nucleic acids from solutions, but I believe the physics is the same. Once you have a nucleation or seed with the correct 3-D interactions it can form a suitable lattice whereby crystal growth consists of adding molecules to the lattice from solution. Generally you want to have the solution form supersaturated, so that the freely moving solute molecules (in liquid) can attach to the solid lattice forming relatively stable intermolecular interactions. These lattice interactions generally depend upon ionic and Van Der Waals contacts so require close contact for favorable interactionsenergies due to their strong distance dependence. "Seeding" is important as the formation of a sufficiently stable set of interacting of nucleated molecules that do not simply fall apart in the liquid by random collision is a rare (slow) process.
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