SomeFacts | Plants

Plants

Which plant has the largest floating leaves?
The giant waterlily of the Amazon region has huge leaves. They grow ...

What is the smallest flowering plant?
A tiny tropical floating duckweed is the world's smallest flowering ...

Which plant grows the slowest?
The record for the slowest growing plant probably goes to the dioon ...

What is the world’s longest seaweed?
Giant kelp is a huge seaweed that forms underwater forests in the ...

Which plant grows the fastest?
The giant bamboo of Myanmar (Burma) grows at up to 46 cm (18 in) a ...

How deep are the deepest roots?
Roots of a South African fig were found to have penetrated 120 metres ...

Which plant has the longest leaf?
The raphia palm of tropical Africa produces the longest known leaves. ...

What is the largest seed?
The coco de mer of the Seychelles has the largest seeds, each ...

What is the oldest plant?
The oldest known plant is probably the creosote bush of the Mojave ...

What is the tallest tree?
The California redwood, which grows along the North American Pacific ...

What is raffia?
Raffia is a natural fibre made from the young leaves of the raphia ...

What is jojoba?
Jojoba is a low-growing bush found in the Sonoron Desert of Mexico ...

What is balsa?
Balsa is the world's lightest timber and floats high in water. Balsa ...

What is before?
Kapok is similar to cotton and also comes from a plant, this time ...

How is cork produced?
Cork comes from a tree called the cork oak. This tree grows wild ...

How many things can be made from bamboo?
Bamboo is one of the world's most useful natural plant products. As ...

What wood makes the best cricket bats?
The best cricket bats are made in northern India, from the timber of ...

What medicine comes from deadly nightshade?
Deadly nightshade has bright juicy berries, which are also very ...

What links yams with birth control?
Wild yams provided the medicines for the first contraceptive pills. ...

What are coca and cola?
A world-famous fizzy drink originally contained extracts of two South ...

Which plants help with breathing problems?
Lungwort is a herb with purple flowers and spotted leaves. It is used ...

Which herb is traditionally used to treat headaches?
Feverfew is a pungent plant belonging to the daisy family. It takes ...

Can plants help fight cancer?
Several plants are known to be effective against cancer tumours. One ...

What is ginseng?
Ginseng is a plant related to ivy, and has been used in herbal ...

What links willow trees with aspirin?
Willow twigs were once chewed to give pain relief, and a compound ...

What plants aid the digestion?
Many plants, including the herbs and spices used in cooking, are used ...

Which plant helps combat malaria?
Quinine, from the bark of the quinine tree, which grows in the South ...

What is the Amazon cow-tree?
The Amazon cow- or milk-tree is a tropical fig. It takes its name ...

Where does coffee come from?
The coffee plant is a large shrub, and its berries are used to make ...

What is breadfruit?
Breadfruit is a tree, native to Polynesia, which grows to about 20 ...

Where did wheat come from?
Wheat is one of the oldest known crops. It was probably first ...

How is chocolate made?
The cocoa tree comes originally from the eastern Andes in South ...

Which plants give us oil?
The seeds of many plants are rich in oil, which they store as a ...

How is tea made?
Tea comes from the leaves of a species of camellia. This is planted ...

Which plants are used to make sugar?
The main source of sugar is the sweet stems of the sugar cane, a tall ...

Which trees give us a sweet, sugary syrup?
The sugar maple has a sweet sap, which is harvested to make maple ...

Where were potatoes first grown?
Potatoes grow wild in the Andes Mountains of South America and were ...

What is papyrus?
Papyrus is a tall sedge that grows along rivers and in swamps. It was ...

How do water plants get their flowers pollinated?
Even though their growth is mainly below the surface, most water ...

What food plants come from wetlands?
The most important wetland crop is rice, which is grown in many parts ...

How do water plants disperse their fruits?
The running water of streams and rivers carries floating fruits ...

Why do most water plants grow only in shallow water?
Most plants need to root themselves in the soil, even if they live ...

How does the bladderwort feed?
Bladderwort is a carnivorous plant found in boggy pools. The ...

How does a lake turn into land?
Over time, a lake will gradually turn into dry land by a process ...

Why is the water hyacinth sometimes a problem?
Water hyacinth is a floating plant with beautiful mauve flowers. ...

Why do some lakes have very few plants?
Lakes vary in the chemical composition of the water that they ...

How are wetlands damaged?
When soil is drained, or too much water is pumped from the land ...

What do we get from rainforests?
We get many things from rainforests, including timber, Brazil nuts, ...

What is an air-plant?
An air-plant grows without anchoring itself with roots. Air plants ...

Why are the tropical rainforests so rich in species?
No one knows for certain, but it may be because they have been ...

What prevents the tall trees from blowing over?
Many of the taller forest trees have special supporting flanges near ...

How fast are the rainforests being destroyed?
Every year an area the size of Belgium is lost or badly damaged. ...

Which plants can trap their own rain water?
It rains very often in the tropical rainforest, and many plants trap ...

How tall are the biggest rainforest trees?
The main canopy of the rainforest develops at around 30 metres (95 ...

How much rain falls in the rainforest?
The tropical rainforests are warm and wet. In many, the rainfall is ...

What are lianes?
Lianes, or lianas, are plants that clamber over and dangle down from ...

Why do the trees lose their leaves in autumn?
Trees and other plants that lose their leaves all at once each year ...

Which conifer is deciduous?
Larch is a coniferous tree - because it bears cones. But unlike most ...

How old can forest trees get?
Many forest trees reach a great age, notably oaks, which have been ...

What lives on the forest floor?
The forest floor is a mish-mash of dead leaves, twigs, fungi and the ...

What else do we get from temperate forests?
Temperate forests provide us with a range of products as well as ...

How are temperate forests harvested for wood?
Many temperate forests are not natural, but have been managed for ...

Which forest tree can be tracked down by its sound?
The leaves of the aspen tree move from side to side in the wind, and ...

Why do most woodland flowers appear in spring?
By developing early they can benefit from the sunlight before it is ...

What is the most northerly flower?
A species of poppy has been found growing further north than any ...

How do some polar plants melt the snow?
Several Arctic and mountain plants that survive under the snow have ...

Why do many Arctic plants have swollen roots?
Many Arctic plants have swollen roots or underground stems. They ...

Why are many tundra flowers white or yellow?
Most tundra flowers are pollinated by insects. However, there are ...

Why are many Arctic shrubs evergreen?
Many Arctic shrubs keep some or all of their leaves throughout the ...

What plants do reindeer eat?
Reindeer (or caribou) survive the Arctic winter by foraging for food. ...

Why are there more plants in the Arctic?
The Arctic is surrounded by land masses from Canada and Greenland to ...

Why are there so few plants in the Antarctic?
Most of Antarctica is covered with snow and ice all year. Only the ...

What is permafrost?
Even where the surface soil in the Arctic thaws in the summer, ...

How do mountain plants attract pollinators?
Many mountain plants have large, colourful flowers to attract the few ...

How can plants survive the snow and ice?
Few plants can survive being completely frozen, but many can thrive ...

How do some mountain plants reproduce without flowers?
Many mountain plants have dispensed with flowers because of the lack ...

What is the tree-line?
Trees cannot grow all the way up a mountain, and the highest level ...

Why are alpine flowers so popular in gardens?
Many mountain plants, such as gentians and saxifrages, are known as ...

How do mountain herbivores find their food?
Many mountain mammals burrow under the snow and continue to feed on ...

Why do different plants grow on different sides of a mountain?
Different sides of a mountain have different climates. On the south ...

How do plants survive the cold?
Plants have evolved many different ways of surviving mountain ...

Why is it colder in the mountains?
The Sun heats the ground and this heat is trapped close to the ground ...

Where are the prairies?
The prairies extend from central southern Canada, through the ...

Where is the pampas?
The pampas stretches across Argentina, Uruguay and southeastern ...

What are grasslands used for?
Grasslands have long been used for grazing herds of domestic animals, ...

What animals live in the grasslands of Asia?
Wild horses once grazed on the Asian steppe, along with antelopes and ...

What animals live in the grasslands of South America?
The animals of the pampas include such strange creatures as the mara ...

Where are the steppes?
The steppes - the grassland of Asia cover a huge swathe of country ...

What animals live in the grasslands of North America?
The original animals of the prairie were buffalo and deer, and ...

Why don’t trees take over the grassland?
Trees cannot survive easily in natural grassland areas, mainly ...

How do the plants survive fire?
Some grassland plants survive fires by persisting as thickened roots, ...

Which garden flowers come from natural grasslands?
From the grasslands of Europe and Asia come flowers such as adonis, ...

How do grassland fires start in nature?
Fires sometimes rage in grasslands, especially in the dry summer ...

Which is the driest desert?
In parts of the Sahara the average yearly rainfall is less than I mm, ...

What is an oasis?
An oasis is a place in the desert where water is in plentiful supply, ...

Which is the hottest desert?
Parts of the Sahara and the Mojave Desert in North America experience ...

What is a Joshua tree?
The Joshua tree grows in the Mojave Desert, California, USA. It grows ...

What lives in a large cactus?
Cacti are home to a variety of wildlife. Their flowers are visited by ...

How deep do the roots of desert plants go?
Some desert plants have very long roots that can tap into deep ...

Why are some deserts expanding?
Some deserts, such as the Sahara, are growing larger each year. This ...

How big is the largest cactus?
The largest of all cacti is the giant cactus or saguaro, of the ...

How do desert flowers survive droughts?
Many desert flowers live for only a short time and set seed rapidly ...

How do ‘resurrection’ plants survive the drought?
When conditions get very dry, the leaves of resurrection plants ...

What is the strangest desert plant?
Welwitschia is probably the strangest desert plant of all. It lives ...

Which is the coldest desert?
Antarctica is sometimes called a cold desert, and is in fact ...

What are living stones?
Living stones are special desert plants from southern Africa. They ...

What happens to all the leaves that fall?
Huge quantities of leaves fall each season from forest trees, but ...

How can plants be used to help stop erosion?
Erosion is when soil is loosened and removed by the action of natural ...

What is the nitrogen cycle?
Bacteria in the soil use nitrogen from the air and turn it into a ...

How do plants recycle water?
Plants help to return water to the air through the process of ...

How are plants used to clean up sewage?
Sewage works use tiny algae and other microscopic organisms in their ...

How do plants make the soil more fertile?
When plants die, they decompose, releasing the chemicals in their ...

How do plants colonize bare ground?
Some plants can quickly colonize bare soil. They do this by ...

How do forests help improve the air?
Forests help to preserve the quality of the air we breathe. They do ...

Where do seeds develop?
Each ovule is destined to become a seed, and develops inside the ...

Which flowers last for only one day?
The flowers of morning glory open each morning and shrivel and die ...

Why do flowers open in spring/summer?
In temperate regions many flowers open in spring or summer because ...

Which flowers are pollinated by mammals?
The flowers of the African baobab tree are pollinated by bushbabies ...

Why are many seeds poisonous?
Many mammals and birds eat seeds. Some plants have seeds that are ...

How much pollen do flowers make?
Flowers can produce enormous quantities of pollen. Some American ...

What happens in a flower after pollination?
After pollination, the pollen that has landed on the stigma of ...

Which plants have the smallest seeds?
Orchids produce the smallest seeds. They are microscopic and are ...

How many seeds can a plant produce?
In the tropical forests of Central and South America, a single ...

Can plants reproduce without seeds?
Some plants, such as mosses, liverworts and ferns, do not produce ...

How do plants take in water?
Plants use their extensive root systems to take in water from the ...

How fast does sap flow through a tree?
In warm conditions, with a plentiful supply of water to the roots, ...

How does a Venus fly-trap catch its prey?
The fly-trap is a carnivorous (meat-eating) plant that catches ...

Why do roots grow downwards?
Roots grow downwards because they can detect the pull of gravity. The ...

What makes a seed grow?
To grow, a seed needs moisture, warmth and air. Some seeds can only ...

Why do shoots grow upwards?
Most shoots grow upwards, towards the sunlight. The growing tip of ...

How does a parasitic plant feed?
Parasitic plants do not need to make their own food, and many are not ...

What does a plant need to grow?
Plants need water, mineral salts, and foods such as carbohydrates. ...

How do green plants feed?
Green plants make their own food in a process called photosynthesis. ...

Why are most plants green?
Most plants are green because they contain the green pigment ...