EQ: Why are plants important to our lives?

Plants are organisms (living things) that make their

own food through photosynthesis.

There are many different types of plants in the world—but they all make their own food through photosynthesis!

Introduction to Plants

Photosynthesis is the

process by which plants use light energy to produce sugar.

This is how plants make food to survive.

Because plants make their own food, other organisms depend on plants for food!

Photosynthesis

Plants are producers—They make food. (Thank you,

Photosynthesis!)

Animals are consumers—They must eat other organisms. (These can be plants or other animals.)

Fungi are decomposers—They cause organisms to decay or rot. (This usually occurs on things that are already dead.)

Plants are at the bottom of the food chain, but without them we would not be able to live!

Producer Consumer Decomposer

The Importance of Plants

Most plants have the following parts:

Flower

Stem

Leaf

Root

Fruit/Seed

What makes up a plant?

We eat ALL parts of plants!

FRUITS Tomato

Apple

Cucumber

Strawberries

Blueberries

Lemon

LEAVES Lettuce

Spinach

Cabbage

Collard greens

Mustard greens

Kale

We eat ALL parts of plants!

STEMS Celery

Rhubarb

Onions

SEEDS Lima Beans

Peas

Green Beans

Sunflower Seeds

Black-eyed Peas

Pinto Beans

We eat ALL parts of plants!

ROOTS Carrots

Beets

Turnips

Sweet Potatoes

Radish

FLOWERS Broccoli

Cauliflower

Squash Blossoms

Artichoke

Your challenge is to try to eat at least one of each

type of plant part at lunch this week.

Keep your eye out for all the different parts of plant, and then write down what you ate/which part you ate.

This may mean you will need to try new foods!! THAT’S A GOOD THING!

Cafeteria Challenge

If you meet the challenge, then you will be

rewarded.

Each time you complete all six parts, you will get one extra bonus point good towards Friday’s science quiz! I will cap your earnings at five points.

Challenge… Met!

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

Did you know that not every plant has roots? Or

fruit? Or stems? Or seeds?

Did you know that scientists classify plants into groups just like they classify animals into groups?

Do you remember? “How do scientists classify organisms?”

Organisms are classified/grouped based on their like or unlike characteristics.

Plant Classification

We already learned that animals are classified into

two main groups… what were they?

Vertebrates and Invertebrates

Remember?

Two Groups of Plants

Vascular Plants-

plants that move water and food from their roots to their stems and leaves through tube-like structures Apple tree

Pine tree

Fern

Daisy

Carrot

Nonvascular Plants-

plants that absorb water through their surface tissues because they lack tube-like structures to move food and water Moss

Liverwort

Algae

Just like animals adapt to survive in their

environments, plants also have special adaptations.

Each plant’s adaptations help it to survive.

Examples:

Does it have leaves?

Does it live in a rainy area?

Does it live in a dry area?

Does it need a lot of sunlight?

Does it have flowers?

Adaptations

http://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/a

ssetGuid/8B456876-47E2-4457-96CA-D6F1FF1B8AD0

Watch this!

Nonvascular plants do not have tubes to transport

water and food through the plants.

Instead, they absorb water/nutrients through their surface tissues—this is called osmosis.

Examples of these types of plants are moss, algae, and liverwort.

This is why you usually find moss growing in a shaded, damp place.

Nonvascular Plants

MOSS

LIVERWORT

Algae

THINK!

Where would be a good place to find a nonvascular plant?

Is there somewhere like that on Strong Rock’s campus?

Let’s Go Find Some!

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

NONVASCULAR

VASCULAR

What were the two groups of plants?

Most plants that you see are vascular plants.

Vascular plants have tubes that help to move water and nutrients through the stem and to the leaves to keep the plant alive and well.

Vascular plants have two types of specialized tissues to move materials:

Xylem: transports water and minerals

Phloem: transport sugar

Vascular Plants

Xylem- a special plant tissue that

moves water and minerals up from the roots through the plant.

Xylem

Phloem - a special plant tissue that

transports sugar from the leaves down to the roots and fruits of the plant.

Phloem

A tree trunk is just a really large stem. This is what

the it looks like when it is cut in half… Why?

Think!

A plant’s vascular tubes,

xylem and phloem, work together to transport food and water throughout the plant—and this is what keeps the plant alive.

Vascular Tubes

We can observe the movement of water through a

plant’s xylem, with a simple experiment…

All we will need are:

Vascular plants

Water

Food coloring

Let’s try it!

Each group will need the following items:

Two cups

One stalk of celery (with leaves still attached)

One carnation

Food coloring

As a group, decide which two colors you would like—choices are purple, green, blue, and pink.

Scissors

Sharpie

Materials

1. Write the initials of each student in your group on

the outside of each cup with a sharpie.

2. Fill each cup halfway with water.

3. Drop 5 drops of food coloring into the water.

4. Take the carnations and celery and cut off the ends to open up the xylem tubes.

5. Place the stems of the plants in the cup of colored water.

6. Allow the plants to stand in the water for at least twenty-hours, then observe.

Directions

What do you think will happen to the celery plant?

Why?

What do you think will happen to the carnation?

Why?

Predictions

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

Yesterday, you put celery and carnations in colored

water. Let’s observe what changes took place!

What do you notice that is different?

What are the tubes called that move water up through the plant?

Can you find them?

Let’s see what happened!

Remember this? Let’s learn

about these

today!!

Parts of a Vascular Plant

Leaves

Vascular plants need leaves in order to make sugar (food) for the plant through photosynthesis.

There are many different leaf characteristics.

Scientists have broken leaf characteristics into two categories:

Monocot-leaves with parallel veins

Dicot-leaves with netted veins

Look at leaf venation

Monocots

Parallel-veined leaves

Monocot vs. Dicot

Dicots

Net-veined leaves

Compound

Simple

Dicots—TWO TYPES!

Leaf Structure—Notice if there is one or multiple leaves past the leaf stalk.

Dicots Leaf Arrangements

Alternate

Opposite

Whorled

Monocot? Dicot?

Dicot

Monocot

Simple? Compound?

Compound

Simple

Alternate? Opposite? Whorled?

Alternate Opposite

Whorled

A B

C

Let’s Review!

LEAVES

Monocot Dicot

Simple Compound

Alternate Opposite Whorled

Dicots Leaf Margins

Leaf Margin: Notice the leaf’s edge. What does it look like?

Hairy Lobed Smooth Toothed Wavy

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

There are three main groups of vascular plants:

Angiosperms—Seeds and Flowers

Gymnosperms—Seeds but no Flowers

Seedless Plants—No Seeds or Flowers

Vascular Plants

Angiosperms make up around 80% of all the living plant species on Earth. (That’s over 300,000 types of plants!)

An angiosperm is a plant that produces flowers containing seeds.

A flower will turn to seed after it has been pollinated.

What are some ways pollination might happen?

Angiosperms

All angiosperms make

their seeds from flowers.

For example: After fruit trees bloom, they can then grow fruits with seeds inside.

Flowers = Seeds (p. 20)

Tree Bud

Flower Fruit

Seed

Why do flowers have

pollen in the spring? Well, to make seeds of course! A flower will turn to seed once pollinated.

The stamen, or top part of the flower, produces pollen.

Pollen! “Achoo!!” (p. 21)

When an animal is attracted to a flower’s sweet smell/nectar, some of the pollen on the stamen sticks to the animal.

Then, when the animal goes to another flower, that pollen is transferred to a new plant.

Pollination

The pollen that the animal

brought to the new flower will stick to the top of the a flower’s pistil.

After that, the pollen will grow down into the base of the flower, and the flower will then start to turn to seed.

Pollination continued…

Watch this!

Pollinators!

What about…

All angiosperms have the common characteristic of

making a flower.

However, there are lots of different types of flowers in the world!

Let’s discuss a few interesting ones…

Characteristics

Day Lilies

You might spot day lilies around.

These flowers are unique because the blooms only last one day! (Hence, the name… DAY lilies!)

What was that Bible verse we learned about lilies?

Matthew 6:28b-30~ ”See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

Venus Flytrap

Have you heard of this cool plant?

It grows in soil that does not have enough nutrients, so God gave this plant a cool adaptation.

It attracts insects… to eat them! It gets extra nutrients from being carnivorous!

Do you think it is an angiosperm?

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/life/videos/venus-flytrap-catches-flies.htm

Honeysuckle

The honeysuckle is a plant that has sweet-smelling blooms and nectar.

You can find these growing in the wild, pluck off the end of the flower, and get a drop of nectar that tastes as sweet as honey!

Let’s learn something… Gross!!

This flower does NOT smell good. In fact, it reeks!

This is a Stapelia plant. (It’s a succulent—which is kind of like a cactus without thorns.)

It’s smell is supposed to resemble how a decaying, rotten animal would smell after it died.

It attracts flies by it’s stinky smell. (Flies can pollinate too!)

Even the flower itself is supposed to resemble a red

and hairy piece of rotten flesh! GROSS!!

Corpse Flower

This flower is probably the largest and rarest flower of all.

It grows in the rainforests of Indonesia.

It also smells like rotten meat.

Angel’s Trumpet

These flowers grow hanging upside-down!

If you are hungry, though, don’t take a bite… The plant is poisonous to eat.

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

There are three main groups of vascular plants:

Angiosperms—Seeds and Flowers

Gymnosperms—Seeds but no Flowers

Seedless Plants—No Seeds or Flowers

Vascular Plants

A gymnosperm is a plant that produces seeds but not

flowers.

Can you think of any plants that have seeds without having a flower first?

Examples of these types of plants are:

Conifers (cone-bearing seed plants )

Cycads

Ginkgo

Gymnosperms

Gymnosperm literally means—”Naked Seeds”

Gymnosperm v. Angiosperm

Conifers

Conifer characteristics:

They are often evergreen plants.

They usually have needle-shaped leaves.

Their seeds are usually found in a cone.

Tree Pollen? “Achoo!!”

Pollination still must occur for gymnosperms to make seed.

They use the wind to pollinate!

Pollen from one tree will blow to the cone of another.

Cycads

These are palm-like, cone-bearing evergreen plants.

They often grow in tropical areas.

Ginkgo

This type of gymnosperm only has one species still alive.

The other ginkgo plants are extinct.

Let’s learn some cool facts about

Gymnosperms….

Bristlecone Pine

These are the oldest trees in the world!

Some are thought to be over 5,000 years old! (That would make them the oldest, living organisms on earth!)

They are found in the desert mountains of California and Nevada.

Redwood Trees

These are the tallest trees in the world!

Some are measured to be over 360 feet tall!

They are found on the California coast.

Redwood Trees

Giant Sequoias

These are giant trees also found in California.

They can reach heights of over 310 feet!

They are the largest trees on earth weighing over 4 million pounds!

“Why does a Christmas tree look like that?”

The cone-shape of many conifers like spruce, cedar, and fir help them survive in cold areas.

The snow slides off the branches easier without the branch breaking.

Their needles also hold water better than regular leaves so the tree can survive better in the winter.

Gymnosperm Sum Up

Plant Classification

EQ: How do scientists classify plants?

Seedless plants do NOT have seeds or flowers.

They reproduce through spores, not seeds.

Examples of seedless plants are ferns and horsetails.

Seedless Plants

Ferns

A fern is a seedless plant that must grow in a shaded, damp area.

It reproduces through spores.

The spores form on the backsides of the leaves, and when the plant is ready, blow off in the wind.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/assignment-discovery-shorts-ferns.htm

Horsetails

There are about 30 species of horsetails in the world.

Some species of horsetails are native to Georgia.

It has been used as cough medicine for horses.

It, of course, reproduces through spores, not seeds.

Today, you are a botanist. Botany is the study of plants.

We will be finding examples of the vascular plants we have learned about.

We will be looking for various adaptations that each plant has in order to survive in its habitat.

Be sure to take your plant journal with you!

Botany!

THINK!

Where would be a good place to find an angiosperm?

Is there somewhere like that on Strong Rock’s campus?

BRING YOUR PLANT JOURNAL!

Let’s Go Find An Angiosperm!

THINK!

Where would be a good place to find an gymnosperm?

Is there somewhere like that on Strong Rock’s campus?

BRING YOUR PLANT JOURNAL!

Let’s Go Find A Gymnosperm!

THINK!

Where would be a good place to find an seedless plant?

Is there somewhere like that on Strong Rock’s campus?

BRING YOUR PLANT JOURNAL!

Let’s Go Find A Seedless Plant!