Plants & Trees Facts for Kids
Fascinating facts about the plant world
Mosses reproduce extremely slowly and can live for hundreds of years on old stone walls and rooftops, building up thick cushions over centuries.
Almost every food chain on Earth starts with a plant or other photosynthetic organism — plants capture the sun's energy and pass it on to every animal that eats them.
A pomegranate fruit can contain up to 1,400 seeds, each surrounded by a jewel-like pocket of sweet juice called an aril — pomegranates have been symbols of abundance for thousands of years.
Pine trees can grow in very poor sandy soil where many other plants cannot survive, because they have special mycorrhizal fungal partners that help them absorb nutrients efficiently.
In warm climates, a healthy lemon tree can be in flower and fruit at the same time all year round, producing hundreds of lemons each year.
Most clover plants have three leaves, but occasionally a genetic mutation produces a four-leaf clover — the odds of finding one in a field are about 1 in 5,000.
All types of tea — black, green, white, and oolong — come from the same plant, Camellia sinensis; the differences in flavour come from how the leaves are dried and processed.
Leaves turn red, orange, and yellow in autumn as the green chlorophyll breaks down, revealing other pigments that were always there but hidden beneath the green colour.
Humans have been cultivating grapevines and making wine for at least 8,000 years — archaeological evidence of winemaking has been found in ancient Georgia in the Caucasus.
Brazil nuts can only be harvested from wild trees because they depend on a specific large bee for pollination and certain forest rodents to bury and spread their seeds — they cannot be grown on plantations.