Plants

Plants are living things. They feed, breathe, grow, and make new plants, but they are different from animals.

Plants don't move from place to place like animals do. Plants keep growing, but animals don't grow when they are older.

Scientists think that there are more than 300,000 types of plants in the world!

Scientists put plants into different groups to classify them. They think about how plants grow and how they make new plants.

Seed Plants

New plants grow from the seeds. Many of these plants produce flowers (for example, daisies) and many others produce cones (conifers).

Non-seed Plants

Ferns and mosses are non-seed plants. They don't make seeds, but they make tiny spores. New plants grow from these spores.

Parts of a Plant

Click on the image below and label the plant.

The Life of a Plant

Plants change at different times of their life. They grow and make new plants. When they get old, they die. This is called a life cycle.

Click on the image below to do these activities:

How Plants Feed

Plants make food for themselves by a process called photosyntesis. This word is made of two parts: 'photo', which means light, and 'synthesis', which means building or putting together.

Plants use sunlight to make food from carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). Plants get carbon dioxide from the air, and water from the soil. During photosynthesis, plants also produce oxygen (O2).

Plants capture the energy in sunlight and store it in the sugars and starch that they make. 

Now watch and sing the 'Photosynthesis' song!

The green parts of a plant are where photosynthesis takes place. A plant's roots, flowers, fruits and seeds cannot make food. They have different functions. Only the green parts have the chemical called chlorophyll. This is a green pigment found mostly in leaves.

Plant Classification

There are more than 250,000 plant species on Earth. All of them can be classified into two groups: nonflowering and flowering.

NONFLOWERING PLANTS

They are the smallest group. They never produce flowers or seeds. They reproduce with spores. When the right conditions exist, spores germinate and create a new plant. Examples are mosses and ferns.

Mosses are very short plants with tiny stem, leaf and root structures. They live on rocks, on tree trunks, and on the ground. Moss spores are produced in a capsule at the end of a filament.

Ferns are much larger than mosses. They have thick, underground stems and large leaves. Fern spores form on the underside of the leaves.

Nonflowering plants grow in dark, humid forests.
Here is a picture of Iguazú Falls in Argentina where you can see mosses and ferns.

FLOWERING PLANTS

They form the most numerous, diverse plant group. They produce flowers and seeds to reproduce. They can be classified into two groups:

Gymnosperms
They have small, simple flowers without a corola or calyx. They do not produce fruit. The seeds are grouped together in cones.

Most gymnosperms are trees that have leaves all year. As a result, they are called evergreens. Cypress trees, pines and firs are gymnosperms.

In this photograph you can see a cypress forest in Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina.

Angiosperms
They have large, beautiful flowers. They produce seeds and fruit.
This is the largest plant group. It includes trees, bushes and grasses. Chestnut trees, thyme, and poppies are angiosperms. Angiosperms that lose all their leaves in autumn are called deciduous plants.

Here is a photo of ceibo trees, with their beautiful red flowers.

Did you know that ceibo's flower is Argentina's national flower?