Plants & Trees Facts for Kids
Fascinating facts about the plant world
Leaves are covered in tiny pores called stomata that open and close to control the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and to regulate water loss through transpiration.
Welwitschia mirabilis, a plant from the Namib Desert, grows only two leaves in its entire lifespan and some specimens are estimated to be over 1,500 years old.
Tropical rainforest trees often have massive buttress roots that spread out at their base like fins, providing stability in thin, waterlogged soils where deep anchorage is impossible.
Some Australian plants like banksias have seeds sealed in woody cones or follicles that only open and release seeds after intense heat from a bushfire.
Ripening fruit releases ethylene gas, which signals neighbouring fruit to ripen too — this is why placing an unripe banana next to ripe fruit makes it ripen faster.
Many of our most important crop plants, including wheat, cotton, and strawberries, are polyploids — they have multiple complete sets of chromosomes, often the result of ancient hybridisation events.
Water moves up a tree against gravity through a continuous transpiration stream — evaporation from leaves pulls water columns upward through narrow tubes in a process that can raise water over 100 m.
Phytoremediation is the process of using plants to absorb and remove heavy metals and other pollutants from contaminated soil and water — sunflowers were used to clean up after the Chernobyl disaster.
Lichens are pioneer organisms that can colonise bare rock, slowly breaking it down by producing acids, and creating a thin soil layer that allows mosses and then larger plants to grow.
Lignin, the compound that makes wood hard, is one of the most abundant organic polymers on Earth and was a major evolutionary innovation that allowed plants to grow tall.