PLANT LIFE The Size of Plants Unless you use a microscope some tiny plants such as some algae are invisible Other plants such as giant Sequoia trees are hundreds of feet tall Enormous groves of Aspen trees are hundreds of feet wide How Plants Live Many types of plants grow together in forest grassland desert or aquatic ecosystems Mosses hug the ground in dense mats Vines climb up and over other plants and objects Some plants are very small and only seen when magnified More than half of the world’s plant species live in the rainforest Molds and fungi prefer dark moist places where there is dead stuff for them to digest and absorb Soil is loaded with them So are your sneakers You may even see them in your refrigerator on food that has been in there too long Sequoias can grow up to 379 1 feet 115 5 m in height and 23 feet 7 m in diameter at the base Mold is used to produce some of our foods W H A T I S A P L A N T 5
6 PLANT LIFE W H A T I S A P L A N T Some aquatic plants live in watery places with their leaves floating on the surface Desert plants live for long periods without any water at all Flowering plants are the most common but many such as mosses and ferns do not have flowers Evergreen trees pine spruce fir hemlock and cedar all have cones instead of flowers Though most plants grow in the wild people all over the Earth grow and cultivate a large variety of plants Some are food plants like rice wheat and corn We grow other crops for the beauty of their forms and colors of their flowers We also value plants for the healthful substances they produce or just the comfort of having them around The lily pad’s long stem anchors it to the bottom of the pond The seeds of an evergreen tree are produced in its cones Some of the rice we eat might be grown in this field in Bali Indonesia organism OR-guh-niz-uhm a living plant or animal chlorophyll KLOR-uh-fil the green substance in plants that uses light to make food from carbon dioxide and water photosynthesis foh-toh-SIN-thuh-siss a chemical process in green plants that makes food and releases oxygen from carbon dioxide water and sunlight energy
7 PLANT LIFE W H A T I S A P L A N T Classifying the Plant World There are many organisms on Earth with similar characteristics The plant kingdom has many divisions We call each division a phylum The kingdoms Protista and Fungi also contain organisms with plant like characteristics but they are not considered plants A class is a division of a phylum Further division of the plant kingdom follows the groupings of Carolus Linnaeus used for all organisms Classes of organisms are divided into groups called orders followed by families and finally the genus and species The genus and species is the first and last name of an organism They are Latin names Every known organism on Earth has a scientific name in Latin The Latin name for human is Homo sapiens When we think of plants we often think of plants belonging in the Coniferophyta or the Anthophyta phylums Carolus Linnaeus 1707 1778 Getting to know Carl von Linné was born in Sweden in 1707 We know him by his Latin name Carolus Linnaeus Linnaeus was interested in nature and plants He taught himself about biology and botany the study of plants He devised a system to classify all the plants and animals known at that time He described living things and grouped them by their shared physical characteristics For instance he put animals with backbones or vertebrae in one group and those without a backbone in another He put animals that laid eggs in one group and those that had live young in another Linnaeus gave each group and each kind of living thing a Latin name made up of two descriptive words Scientists refer to this system as the binomial two names system of nomenclature naming In 1735 he published a series of books Systema Naturae which described and named all the animals and plants known at that time Scientists today still use his binomial classification system to organize and understand all living things
N Coniferophyta are cone-bearing plants The cones contain the plants T seeds Some common examples of conifer trees are pines and bald cypress trees We cut down many conifer trees for lumber Angiosperms are seed-bearing vascular plants Their reproductive structures are flowers in which the ovules are enclosed in an ovary Angiosperms are found in almost every A L P PLANT LIFE PLANT LIFE habitat from forests and grasslands to sea margins and deserts Angiosperms display a huge variety of life forms including trees herbs submerged aquatics bulbs and epiphytes The largest plant families are Orchids and Compositae daisies and Legumes beans There are an estimated 352,000 species of flowering plants or angiosperms A S I T A H W Bryophyta Hepatophyta Pteridophyta Lycopophyta The Plant Kingdom Phylum Mosses Liverworts Ferns Club moss Coniferophyta Cone-bearing plants Angiosperms Flowering plants 8
