Botany Basics
A scientist that studies plants
What is a botanist?
When a baby plant wakes up and begins to grow into a little plant, it is called this.
What is a seedling?
The purpose of a flower
What is to make a seed? (Or to make a new plant)
This is the color that attracts hummingbirds
What is red?
Fleshy fruit with a thin skin, such as a grape
What is a berry?
Kind of food the plant makes
What is sugar?
This is a type of soil that's made up of decayed plant and animal matter. You can buy it at the store or you can make your own by saving kitchen scraps, grass, dead leaves, and other plant matter from outside.
What is compost?
Stems turning toward light
What is phototropism?
These are good reasons to grow your own food.
(give at least two)
What is...
- To avoid harmful chemicals
- To save money
- To eat more nutritious food
- To eat tastier food
Provides protection to the inside layers of tree
What is bark?
Ferns are examples of this type of plant. (Vascular or nonvascular?)
What is vascular?
When two different organisms form a relationship where they are dependent on one another
What is symbiosis?
Three kinds of fungi
What are yeast, mold, and mushrooms?
Plants with tubes that carry liquid inside
What are vascular plants?
The process of a seed sprouting into a plant
What is germination?
How a Venus flytrap keeps from shutting its leaf when something other than an animal falls into its trap
What is two of its tiny hairs must be touched before it snaps shut
The process of pollen getting from the stamen to the carpel so that a flower can make a seed.
What is pollination?
The seed container for a plant
What is fruit?
An invisible gas that plants "exhale" into the air in the process of making food. Humans inhale this gas in order to breathe.
What is oxygen?
These do most of the work of absorbing water and nutrients for the plant.
What are root hairs?
Tubes that send water up from the roots to the rest of the plant
What are xylem?
This is why pruning is important.
What is it allows more sunlight and airflow and enables the plant to put all its energy into producing the best flowers and fruit?
The wood in the center of the tree that is no longer living
What is heartwood?
A developing fern first grows into this. It looks like the top of a violin or fiddle. When it is ready, it unfurls and develops into a fern frond.
What is a fiddlehead?
This is a combination of fungus and algae. It grows on trees in healthy environments
What is lichen?
Purpose of the fruiting body of a mushroom
What is to reproduce more mushrooms?
Plants that do not have tubes inside but instead absorb liquid
What are nonvascular plants?
The seed's "coat"
What is the testa?
The female part of the flower located in the center. It includes the stigma, style, and ovary.
What is the carpel?
The flat surface on a flower's petals on which a bee lands
What is a landing pad?
Any edible part of a plant that does not house the seeds for the plant
What is a vegetable?
The green pigment found in all green plants which helps them produce food
What is chlorophyll?
The strongest part of the root. It is at the tip of the root. It is made up of a group of tough cells whose job is to push through dirt in search of moisture and nutrients.
What is the root cap?
Tubes that send sugary food down from the leaves to the rest of the plant
What are phloem? (think "FLOW em")
These tiny pests usually look like reddish spiders. They feed on the underside of leaves and cause them to turn yellow and fall off.
What are mites?
The bud at the tip of a twig or branch
What is a terminal bud?
Ferns can grow new fern plants by spreading _________ along the ground from their rhizomes. It's not really a new plant because each new fern is a clone of the original plant with the exact same DNA.
What are runners?
Although this nonvascular plant has little nutritional value, it is eaten by reindeer because it contains a special chemical that keeps the fluids inside the reindeer from freezing even on the coldest of days!
What is moss?
This mushroom forms a film or skin over dead plants. It is often soft and gooey.
What is jelly fungi?
These are made by plants called Spermatophyta. Their purpose is to grow into new plants. Each one contains a baby plant, food for the baby plant, and a protective covering.
What are seeds?
This will become the root of the plant
What is the radicle?
The male part of the flower that makes pollen. It is a stalk, containing the filament and anther.
What is the stamen?
This is where bees store pollen on their bodies
What are little pouches on the back of their legs?
A method of scattering seeds that involves the plant automatically scattering the seeds when they are ripe
What is mechanical dispersal?
The four things a plant needs to make food
What are water, carbon dioxide, light, and chlorophyll?
One thick, main root growing down from the plant's stem. Carrots, turnips, and beets are examples of this.
What is a taproot?
Plants in this category have hard, woody stems that grow thicker with age
What are woody plants?
This small shovel is needed to dig holes for planting and to transplant plants.
What is a trowel?
This word names the type of tree that produces cones. Seeds are open to the air. One example is a Pine Tree.
What are conifers?
The little bumpy clusters found on the underside of a frond. They are acutually clusters of sporangia (spore containers).
What are sori?
Bryophytes that have leaves shaped like a liver
What are liverworts?
This is why it is important that spores are hydrophobic
What is they need to stay dry to be blown far away from the parent fungi?
Millions of these are located inside the sporangia of seedless plants. They are tiny little bodies that can one day grow into new plants. Each one contains a baby plant and a protective coating only. There is no food for the baby plant in these.
What are spores?
This is the biggest part of the embryo. It absorbs the baby plant food (called endosperm) and stores it for the baby plant to eat once it starts growing.
What is the cotyledon?
Plants that produce seeds within seed containers. They also make flowers.
What are angiosperms?
The long, flexible, straw-like mouth on a butterfly, used to collect nectar
What is a proboscis?
Seeds that are light and designed to fly utilize this type of seed dispersal
What is wind dispersal?
The outside edge of the leaf
What is the margin?
A root's special sense that tells it to turn and grow down in to the Earth.
What is geotropism?
Plants in this category have green, flexible stems that do not grow thicker with age. These stems perform photosynthesis.
What are herbaceous plants?
Brown or black spots on leaves, that sometimes have a yellow border. They are caused by either fungal or bacterial infections and cause the leaves to die.
What are leaf spots?
Makes xylem and phloem. Causes tree to grow wider.
What is vascular cambium?
If a spore lands somewhere that has just the right amount of soil, moisture, and light, it grows into this tiny, heart-shaped plantlet. The structure contains the male and female parts of the fern.
What is a prothallus?
This is how nonvascular plants distribute moisture and nutrients.
What is diffusion? ...Or, a process where the plant absorbs water and nutrients that will soak through to other parts of the plant. (Think paper towel.)
The way the stinkhorn disperses spores
What is it relies on its stinky smell to attract flies and gnats that crawl around the stinkhorn. They get covered in spores and fly off to new locations.