For the elements of a numerical semigroup which are larger than the Frobenius number, we introduce the definition of seed by broadening the notion of generator. This new concept allows us to explore the semigroup tree in an alternative efficient way, since the seeds of each descendant can be easily obtained from the seeds of its parent. The paper is devoted to presenting the results which are related to this approach, leading to a new algorithm for computing and counting the semigroups of a given genus.