What to Learn
Plant nutrition: absorption and transport of nutrients, transpiration, photosynthesis, respiration.- Plant reproduction: the flower, pollination, fertilization, seed dispersal, germination.
- Plant interaction: plant hormones and growth.
Key Information
External Links
Transpiration.Very detailed interactive animation showing how transpiration takes place in plants and which are the factors that have an influence on it. You can also read the lesson text.
Wikipedia: potometer.Learn how to make a potometer and to use it to measure plant transpiration.
Xylem transport (I).Very comprehensive animation showing how xylem sap is pumped from the roots to the leaves of a plant.
Seed dispersal.Flowering plants reproduce themselves by producing seeds, which provide the plants with a way to spread out and grow in new places, sometimes a long way from the parent. Learn how.
Flower structures, plant breeding, cross pollination, making crosses.This animations illustrates the structures of a flower, plant breeding, cross pollination and making crosses.
Movies and Animations
Zoom into a leaf
Watch the surface and the inside of a leaf progressively magnified by an electron microscope.
Photosynthesis
Learn how photosynthesis is performed inside the chloroplasts.
Respiration
Learn if and when a plant respires, absorbing CO2 and producing O2.
Plant fertilization
Learn how male and female gametes fuse in plants and what happens afterwards.
Double fertilization in flowering plants
Detailed view of the process of fertilization in plants.
Reproduction of the pine tree
Learn the specificities of the reproduction process in the gymnosperms.
Plant hormones and growth
Learn how plant hormones control their growth towards the light.
Images
Activities
- Which are the two physical processes that allow the loss of water in the leaves?
- "If a plant wants to obtain water, it has to lose water". Is this assertion true? Why?
- Why is it good for a plant to lose water by transpiration?
- Why is it bad for a plant to lose water by transpiration?
- Why is transpiration important to keep a plant upright?
- How does transpiration make the replication of DNA possible?
- Where is the boundary layer thicker: around the leaves of a cactus or around the leaves of a poplar? Why?
- How does the rate of transpiration change when you take a plant from inside a house to a garden? Why?
- How does the rate of transpiration change when you start boiling water in the same room where you have a plant? Why?
- There are two ways in which a plant can be hermaphrodite. Which ones?
- What is the minimum composition of a male flower?
- The anthers of grasses are very big and dangle out of the flower. Do you expect these flowers to have a colourful big corolla? Why?
- Which one of the three main parts of a pistil is the least necessary? Why?
- How many nuclei does each pollen grain have when it is fully developed?
- What is the mission of the tube nucleus of a pollen grain?
- There is one egg-cell inside each _______________. One ovary can contain one or several _______________.
- When fertilized, the ovules develop into _______________ and the ovaries that contain them develop into _______________.
- What is the micropyle?
- Why is plant fertilization called "double fertilization"?
- What are the main components of a seed? What is the function of each?
- How can a fleshy fruit help the dispersal of its seeds?