WHAT ARE PLANTS What do a sweet-smelling rose bush a tall oak tree and an insect-eating Venus flytrap have in common They are all plants In fact these are just three of the many many types of plants in the world Like animals plants are living things However there are many differences between plants and animals Unlike animals plants cannot move around Plant cells are different from animal cells too The Venus flytrap is a plant that traps and eats insects It belongs to a group of carnivorous or meat-eating plants 4
They have stiff walls made of a tough material called cellulose While animals need to eat Vocabulary Every living thing is made up of structures called cells The cell is the smallest unit with the basic properties of life food to survive almost all plants make their own food They do this using a process called photosynthesis Photosynthesis requires sunlight chlorophyll water and carbon dioxide which is a gas Chlorophyll is a substance in all green plants especially in the leaves Plants take in water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air Chlorophyll is in the green parts of plants such as the leaves and stems of this fern 5
TREES SHRUBS AND HERBS Plants can be classified in several ways To classify things means to place them in different categories or groups A common method of classifying plants is based on their growth form Plants are called trees if they have tall woody stems or trunks and are generally 8 feet 2.4 meters or more in height when they are full-grown full-grown Shrubs are low woody plants usually with many stems branching off close to the ground Herbs have tender juicy stems in which the woody tissue 6 Baobab trees have thick trunks They are found mainly in Africa
Compare and Contrast How are shrubs like trees and herbs How are they different Rosemary is an herb It is native to the Mediterranean region where it still grows wild is much less developed than it is in shrubs and trees Within each of these groups there is a great deal of variety For example some trees such as the giant sequoia can grow to heights of more than 300 feet 90 meters Others such as the flowering dogwood rarely grow to more than 30 feet 9 meters in height 7
