A short description for kids to understand what are the uses of plants & moreover.

3. Plants Life

5. You must have seen plants being grown in
gardens and in fields. Why do people grow
them? This is because we get lot of things
from plants.
Growing plants is important as our life depends
largely on them.

6. If you eat an apple or an orange you will find
seeds inside. New plants can grow from these
seeds.

7. Seed leaves or cotyledons
store food for the baby
plant.
An outer covering called the
seed coat protects the baby
plant inside.

8. Not all seeds grow into new plants. Some plants are
eaten up by birds and insects; some get destroyed
by rain or wind; while some seeds do not get
sufficient air, water or warmth to grow. If the seed
survives and gets right amount of water, air,
warmth (from the sun), it will produce a baby plant
or seedling

9. The process by which a seed produces a
baby plant or seedling is called
germination.
One Minute Please
Do you know that beans grow
from seeds.

10. i). The seed gets water air and warmth.
ii). The seed coat breaks and the baby plant emerges.
iii). The baby plant develops roots and a shoot.
iv). As the plant grows in size it develops leaves. The
cotyledons shrink and appear

11. During the early stages of germination, the seedling
gets the food required for its growth from the
cotyledons. Can you tell from where the seedling get
its food from after the food stored in the cotyledons
has been used up? The reply is soil. The seedling
absorbs water and nutrients from soil with the help of
its roots. it build up with leaves and grow into a plant.
Also, air (which is necessary for germination)
reaches the seed through pores in the soil. This is
why soil is so important for plant growth.

12. If plants live together in one place it is dangerous for
that plants because they will struggle for air,
water, sunlight, nutrients and space to grow. Many
of them would die. In nature, many plants scatter
their seeds in order to ensure that they do not
grow too close to one another.

13. The process by which the seeds are scattered
away from the mother plant is called
dispersal.
Nature has its own way of dispersal of seeds.

14. Seeds of certain plants are very light and have
wings or hair on them. These seeds are
easily carried away by wind.

15. One Minute Please
Dandelion seeds have hair that act like
a parachute. Wind carries these seeds
far away from the parent plant. The fluff
around the cotton seed helps it to float
away with wind.

16. Animals and human beings eat some fruits
and throw away the seeds, which grow into
new plants. Certain seeds have hooks, stiff
hair, or spines, which help them in
dispersal.

17. One Minute PleaseOne Minute Please
Some seeds have spines or
hooks. These seeds stick to the
bodies of animal and birds and
are carried away from the parent
plant. Birds and animals also eat
fruits. Seed pass through their
digestive system undigested and
are dispersed to other areas.

18. Seeds of some plants such as lotus and coconut
are spongy or have a fibrous covering, which
helps them to float on water. Water transports
these seeds from one place to another.

19. One Minute Please
Coconuts can travel several
thousand kilometers across
oceans. The coconut palms on
the South Sea Islands grew from
coconuts carried by there by
ocean currents.

20. Fruits of certain plant such as poppy, pea
and bean burst open when they are ripe,
scattering the seeds in all directions. This
mechanism of seed dispersal is called
explosion

21. One Minute Please
When the seeds of the pea plant are
ripe, the pod bursts open. The peas
are scattered away from the plant.

22. Carrot, radish, turnip and beetroot are some
of the examples whose roots can grow into
new plants

23. Potato and onion are
stems that can grow
into new plants. One Minute Please
Onion is a special kind of stem. It will
grow leaves if you plant one in the
ground.

24. Young Plants arise
the edges of
Bryophyllum
leaves.
One Minute Please
Do you know about J.C Bose? He is an
Indian scientist who proved through
experiments that plants have life. He also
invented several instruments to study
about plants. The most wonderful
instrument was the Cresco graph, used to
measure the rate of growth plant.

25. One Minute Please
Venus fly- trap has two lobes to eat food.
Don’t you understand? This means this
is a carnivore plant. When any animal
come and get inside the lobe, the lobe
suddenly close and the plant get food.
Complete plants can
be grown from
these leaves if
they are placed in
moist soil.

26. Some plants do not have seeds. They grow with
the help of tiny structures called spore. Fungi
and ferns are examples of such as plants.
Mushrooms and other fungi, and ferns
reproduce with the help of spores.

27. Puffball mushroom releasing spores.

28. Imagine that you have a small kitchen garden
where you grow fruits and vegetables. The
fruits and vegetables may be enough for you
and your family, but can you grow enough
fruit in kitchen garden to feed thousand
people? No.

29. In order to feed the entire population, plants are
grown on a large scale.
The practice of growing plants on a large scale is
called agriculture.

30. The plants that are grown in large quantities in a
particular area or region at a particular
season are called crops.

31. (1) Field is ploughed (2) Manure is added to the
soil.
(3) Seeds are sown (We are very sorry to you because there is no
image for “Seeds are sown.”)

32. (4) Fields are
irrigated ( “How this
field is irrigated?”
look at side.)
One Minute Please
Drawing Water from a Canal
A farmer arranges siphons to draw
water from an irrigation canal and send
it down furrows in his field. The furrows
are narrow, relatively shallow trenches
designed to carry water as far down a
crop row as possible. One
disadvantage of the furrow method of
irrigation is that plants nearer the water
source may receive much more water
than those further away.

33. (5) Pesticides are sprayed
to protect crops.
One Minute Please
People in Tamil Nadu are using a
pesticide called Endosulfan to protect the
crops. Do you know that Endosulfan is
very dangerous to us. In Kasargode the
farms has sprayed Endosulfan and they
are now patients in hospital because of
the acid in Endosulfan. Some have the
heads big and other all are small, some
have one leg or one arm small others are
big. This accident took place on 2010th.
(An important case)

34. (6) The crops are harvested.

36. A particular crop may grow well in one season
and may not grow that well in another season.
This is why farmers grow different crops in
different seasons. There are two types of
crops depending on the changes of the
season. They are Kharif Crops & Rabi Crops.

37. Crops grown from June to October are known as
Kharif Crops. These crops depend largely on the
monsoon rains. Examples rice and maize.
Failed Maize Crop
Rice

38. Crops grow from November to April are called
Rabi Crops. These crops do not depend on
monsoon rains. Examples are wheat, beans
and legumes
Soya beans