Category Science

Plants are considered the most peaceful organisms on Earth, primarily because they cannot move. They hardly harm any other life forms as they prepare their food through photosynthesis. However, have you heard of plants that trap insects and eat them?

Much like a gecko or a frog that eat up a fly in a flash, some plants give a nasty surprise to some insects that fly past them. They are carnivorous plants that live on insects and are found across the globe. However, these plants are not much different from other plants. Their developmental pattern and physical structure, is similar to other plants. They too need sunlight, water and other nutrients in order to be healthy. One of the most essential elements for them is nitrogen. Most plants absorb nitrogen from the soil in which they grow. Most insect eating plants grow on warm and marshy soil that contains little nitrogen. Therefore, these plants have to resort to acquiring the vital elements they need, by grabbing insects and devouring them! It is from these insects that the plants get the necessary nourishment.

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Deserts contain some strange and curious plants. The Namib is a coastal desert in Africa. Extending over 1931 kilometres along the Atlantic Ocean, the desert is considered to be the oldest desert in the world.

The Namib Desert is home to a strange variety of plant life. One of them is the welwitschia plant. The plant looks wilted to ordinary people. The welwitschia plant has only two main leaves and they are spread out over the desert. The plant has a tired it sprouts on the ground.

The halfmens plant is another curious plant in the desert. It has a strange resemblance to a human being from a distance. That is the reason behind its African name, which means ‘half plant and half man’! Yet another plant, the kokerboom, has smooth branches. These branches have a light powder that reflects sunlight. The kokerboom has blue leaves that bloom during the months of June and July.

The lichen, the most common plant in the vast desert region, has the ability to draw moisture from fog and stay alive during the hot season.

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Although there are hundreds of cactus species, the saguaro cactus stands out among them all. The largest cactus in the world, these plants are found in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

Like some trees that live long, saguaros can have a long life spanning from 150 to 200 years. They can grow very tall too. A saguaro cactus normally reaches the height of 40 metres. Their growth, however, is extremely slow. The plant continues to grow taller until it completes its life cycle; and thus it takes up to 200 years to reach its full height.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the plant is its arms. They spread out like raised arms of a human being and a fully developed plant looks spectacular from a distance.

A saguaro cactus is fully equipped to meet the harsh climate of the Sonoran Desert. The plant’s skin is covered with a thick wax coating that waterproofs the plant. This wax coating reduces the plant’s water loss significantly. The hard and sharp spines and the flexible bristles of the plant help it to ward off the animals that look for water in the plant. There is a sponge like tissue within the plant, and this helps the plant store water. The stem gets larger and larger as more water is stored within the plant. The ability of the plant to store water in this manner can make it quite heavy. Sometimes, at its full height, a saguaro cactus may weigh around a tonne.

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Human beings have a life span of seventy two hundred years. History, for us, is what is written down in books by people who lived before us. Now, if there were someone who lived a thousand years, he would be able to tell us if these stories were true. Unfortunately, only trees and their seeds, which are mute beings, live that long. Therefore, seeds have the ability to travel through time.

Seeds can live for years after the death of a plant. Some of them will grow into plants after thousands of years too. In 1954, in the Canadian Arctic, Harold Schmidt, a mining engineer, discovered some seeds in burrows several metres below the ground. With the help of the local people, he gathered the seeds, and preserved them in a dry place.

Years later, Dick Harrington, a scientist, tested the seeds by placing them in a conducive environment. The seeds germinated within 48 hours! Six healthy plants grew out of them. The plants were identified as Lupines Arcticus. Scientists estimate that these seeds were 10,000 years old. They had defined time, only to sprout after being dormant for thousand of years.

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Have you eaten an uncooked ripe tomato? Usually we consider the tomato a vegetable and use it in curries. However, it looks like a fruit in all respects. So, what is a tomato, a fruit or vegetable?

What makes a fruit different from vegetable? Vegetables do not contain seeds in them. Therefore, radish, carrot, celery and lettuce are vegetables; whereas, many vegetables, which we have never considered fruits even in the wildest of imagination, are, in fact, fruits! The tomato, therefore, is a fruit, no doubt. Along with it, beans, cucumber, squash and many more are fruits too.

However, we hardly eat them raw. Most of these ‘fruits’ are used as vegetables; and therefore, we call them vegetables out of habit.

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Fleshy fruits have many kinds of seeds. They are generally classified as berry, drupe, aggregate fruits and false fruit.

There are usually several seeds in a berry. Grapes, tomatoes and gooseberries are examples of berries. These fruits change their colour in order to signal when they are ready to be eaten. Drupes, on the other hand, have seeds inside them. These seeds are also known as stones. Mangoes, cherries, peaches and apricots are drupes. When animals eat these fruits, they drop the hand seeds on the ground eating only the flesh.

An aggregate fruit is not a single fruit. Many fruits join together to form an aggregate fruit. In fact, each individual fruit is formed in a separate ovay, and has its own seed and flesh. However, when they grow, they look like a single fruit. Raspberries and loganberries are aggregate fruits.

False fruits are counterparts of true fruits. While true fruits develop from a plant’s ripened ovary, false fruits develop from its ripened ovary together with other parts of the plant. The apple is an example. While the core of the fruit is from the ovary, the outer part of the fruit is grown out of the stem of the plant.

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