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Plants: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Photosynthesis
Plants make their own food from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. This is photosynthesis, and it releases the oxygen we breathe.
Key fact
Chlorophyll, the green pigment, captures the sunlight.
Pollination
Pollination moves pollen from one flower to another so seeds can form. Bees, butterflies, birds, bats and even the wind do the job.
Key fact
About three-quarters of major food crops benefit from animal pollinators.
Roots, Stems & Leaves
Roots anchor plants and soak up water, stems carry water and food around, and leaves catch sunlight to make food.
Key fact
Water can travel over 100 metres up the tallest trees.
Seeds
Seeds carry a baby plant and its food supply. They spread by wind, water or animals, like dandelion parachutes and burrs that cling to fur.
Key fact
Velcro was inspired by burrs stuck to a dog’s fur.
Meat-Eating Plants
Some plants trap insects to get nutrients that are missing from poor soil. The Venus flytrap snaps shut when its trigger hairs are touched twice.
Key fact
Pitcher plants drown insects in a pool of digestive juice.
Trees
Trees can live for thousands of years. Their rings record their age and past weather: one ring for each year.
Key fact
A bristlecone pine in California is over 4,800 years old.
Plant Senses
Plants sense the world. They bend towards light, their roots grow down with gravity, and some fold their leaves when touched.
Key fact
Young sunflowers track the Sun across the sky.
Fun facts
Some sea slugs steal chloroplasts from the algae they eat, then use them to make food from sunlight.
On most vanilla farms, every flower is pollinated by hand, one at a time.
In a 1937 study, a single rye plant grown for four months had about 600 km of roots.
Coconuts can float across oceans and still sprout.
Some pitcher plants in Borneo act as toilets for tree shrews, and take their nutrients from the droppings.
Pando, an aspen grove in Utah, is one single organism: about 47,000 trunks sharing one root system.
In one study, evening primroses made their nectar sweeter within minutes of “hearing” a bee’s buzz.
Story: The Willow in the Pot
The Willow in the Pot
1600s, Brussels. Jan van Helmont plants a small willow in a pot of carefully weighed soil, and gives it nothing but water.
Five years later, the willow has gained about 74 kg. The soil has lost just 57 grams.
He decided the tree was made of water. He had missed the air: plants build themselves largely from carbon dioxide.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Plants release oxygen during photosynthesis.
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True. It’s a by-product of making sugar.
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Question 2 of 10
Pollination is the transfer of pollen between flowers.
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True. It lets plants make seeds.
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Question 3 of 10
Roots take up water from the soil.
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True. Along with minerals.
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Question 4 of 10
Some seeds are spread by animals.
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True. Eaten in fruit, or hooked onto fur.
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Question 5 of 10
The Venus flytrap closes when its trigger hairs are touched.
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True. Usually two touches within about 20 seconds.
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Question 6 of 10
Counting tree rings can show a tree’s age.
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True. Each year adds one ring.
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Question 7 of 10
Plants grow towards light.
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True. Their stems bend to face it.
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Question 8 of 10
Plants get their food mainly from the soil.
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False. They make it from air and water; soil supplies minerals.
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Question 9 of 10
Only bees pollinate flowers.
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False. Birds, bats, beetles, butterflies and the wind do too.
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Question 10 of 10
Leaves are where plants take in most of their water.
Show the answer
False. Water mostly comes in through the roots.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Plants has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — plant science
- FAO — Pollinators and food security
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — photosynthesis, carnivorous plant, tree ring
- Sallon et al. (2008), germination of a 2,000-year-old date palm seed, Science 320
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — State of the World’s Plants and Fungi
- Turlings et al. (1990), parasitic wasps recruited by caterpillar-damaged plants, Science 250
