Category Science

Have you seen soft and furry parachute like dandelion seeds that fly in the air? In the wind, they fly to distant places, where they fall and germinate. Thousands of plants like dandelion produce seeds with a furry crown. They float away in the air, proliferate and propagate their species when they fall on the ground.

Many dry fruits explode when they are ripe. When they snap open, their seeds shoot to a distance. The pods of these fruits have two halves that split apart when they are dry. They explode with a loud noise. Cranesbill fruits are like tiny catapults. When they dry, tension builds up inside them and part of the fruit snaps, flinging seeds to the air.

If you have spent time on grassy lands, you must have come across certain itchy seeds with little spines or hooks. They get stuck to your clothes and are also easily lodged in the fur coat of animals. Thus, they move to distant places. Bur seeds are examples.

Plants that live near rivers and oceans have fruits that can float. Our coconut palm is a perfect example of such a plant. The fruit travels wherever the water takes it. It can survive in seawater for many days. When it finds dry land, it takes roots there, and starts growing. That is why seashore plants are found in various parts of the world.

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Seeds propagate a plant’s life. Therefore, plants package them in beautiful and secure cases called fruits. Nature, in its infinite wisdom, has devised plans to spread the life of plants in the most effective way.

Plants have developed ways to scatter their seeds. Some plants have exploding seedpods that fling seeds far and wide. For some other trees, the wind carries their seeds to distant places. Sometimes, water too comes to their help. Animals play a significant role in spreading seeds. Many plants have fruits that get lodged in the fur of the animal. The animal carries the seeds wherever it goes and deposits them somewhere safely.

Some seeds come in sweet and delicious berries. Animals and birds eat them. However, the seeds remain undigested in their belly and fall to the ground through their droppings. Have you seen banyan trees on top of some very tall buildings? Bird deposited the seeds there through their droppings.

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Yew trees are coniferous plants. However, they are a bit different when it comes to their cones. Yews do not have cones; instead, their seeds come in bright, red fleshy cups, known as an aril, which is open at the tip. They look more like berries than cones. But, beware! Most parts of a yew plant are poisonous!

The tree can grow up to twenty metres and live very long. The leaves of the tree are needle-shaped and dark green in colour. An evergreen tree, yews have male and female trees.

Yew trees have been associated with churchyards for a long time. Most graveyards in England have yew trees in them. It is a long held view that the trees were planted during the time of the plague in order to protect and purify the dead. The graveyards were inaccessible to cows, because eating the leaves of yew plants would kill them.

While the trees were symbols of death, they were also hailed as trees of immortality. For many centuries, it was a custom to carry the yew branches on Palm Sunday, and at funerals.

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Among coniferous plants, there are three major orders. They are cycads, ginkgoes and conifers. Cycads are one of the most primitive plants that bear seeds. They resemble ferns in many ways.

There are about 150 species of cycads. Some of them are found in very remote and restricted areas. Many cycads trees bear poisonous seeds, which look like nuts. The contie, a small and tough cycad, produces a starch called Florida Arrowroot or sago, which is edible.The plant is also known as Sago palm.

Some cycads have tuberous underground stems. Some have leathery, fern-like leaves and others have a columnar stems, which are often mistaken for palms.

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The welwitschia is probably the strangest plant in the world. While most known plants shed their leaves at some point in time, this plant never sheds its leaves. The plant consists of two leaves, a stem base and roots.

The uniqueness of the plant lies in the fact that the two leaves that the plant has will stay on it for as long as the plant lives. However, do not think that the plant has a short life span. It lives for centuries! The average lifespan of these plants is 400 to 1500 years. Many welwitschia plants alive today are 500 to 600 years old and some large ones are thought to be 2000 years old.

The two permanent leaves of the plant never cease to grow. They are broad and as hard as wood. They lie on the ground, and look like torn and shred ribbons in their appearance. There are male and female plants. They flower from summer to autumn.

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Large, tall trees are found in most places in the world. However, the American state of California is where the largest and tallest trees are found.

Conifers, as we have already seen, make the largest and the tallest trees in the world. Such trees are found abundantly in California.The largest conifers are the giant sequoias of the western United States. The biggest among this species, the General Sherman tree, is located in the Sequoia National Park, in California.

The redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. The tallest redwood is 115.7 metres high, and is in California. These trees are slimmer than sequoias, yet more graceful than them. Therefore, as far as trees are concerned, California is the home of the tallest and the largest.

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