Plants
Trees, flowers, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, cacti, and weeds are all plants. Nearly all animal life in the world depends on plants for survival. Whether the animals eat plants directly or eat others that consume plants, animals would not survive long if there were no plants.
Although there can be differences between the wide variety of plants in the world, they all have one thing in common. Plants, unlike animals, are stationary. They can not go in search of food. They instead have chlorophyll which they use to turn the sun's rays into food. This process is called photosynthesis.
They also all possess some sort of root system(to gather nutrients and hold a plant in place), a stem, leaves, and some manner in which to spread the items necessary for reproduction.
Besides being a source of nutrition for animals, plants provide a necessary function in the world by removing poisonous carbon dioxide that animals exhale into the air.
They also release into the atmosphere life sustaining oxygen for animals to breathe.
Without plants, the carbon dioxide levels would eventually become so high and the oxygen levels so low that all animals would die.
Later this year we will study a unit on plants and go into more detail about the various types of plants and their parts.
The main things to remember are
that plants are one of the five kingdoms of life, they differ from animals in that they are not mobile, and they are able to produce their own food through a process called photosynthesis.
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