Plants & Trees Facts for Kids
Fascinating facts about the plant world
Quinine, derived from the bark of the cinchona tree in South America, was the first effective treatment for malaria and was used for centuries before synthetic drugs were developed.
The vascular system of plants — the network of tubes that transports water and nutrients — evolved about 450 million years ago, allowing plants to grow tall and colonise land beyond wet shorelines.
Sunflower seeds contain up to 50% oil by weight, making the sunflower one of the world's most important sources of edible vegetable oil.
Pollen grains have incredibly tough outer walls made of sporopollenin, which resists decay for millions of years — palaeobotanists use fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient climates and ecosystems.
A single mycorrhizal fungal network can extend across many hectares and connect hundreds of individual trees, with a single cubic centimetre of soil containing kilometres of fungal threads.
Many flowers have ultraviolet patterns on their petals invisible to humans but clearly visible to bees, acting as landing guides that direct pollinators toward the nectar.
Striga, a parasitic plant nicknamed 'witchweed,' attaches to the roots of cereal crops like maize and sorghum, stealing water and nutrients and causing billions of dollars in crop losses across Africa annually.
Plants coordinate their growth and responses to the environment using five main classes of hormones: auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, ethylene, and abscisic acid.
The Amazon rainforest grows on surprisingly poor, thin soil — almost all the nutrients in the ecosystem are locked in the living biomass itself, which is constantly recycled by decomposers.
The ice plant has cells on its surface filled with fluid that sparkle like ice crystals in sunlight; this helps reflect excess light and prevent overheating in its desert habitat.