All About Plants

A Venus Fly Trap

• The earliest flower is a flower that scientists think is 120 million years old. It was identified in the year 1989 by Dr. Leo Hickey and Dr. David Taylor of Yale University, from a fossil discovered near Melbourne, Australia. The fossil of the flower was discovered in Victoria, Australia. The angiosperm resembles the modern black pepper plant. It has 2 leaves and one flower, and is known as the Koonwarra plant.

   

• A Venus Fly Trap is a plant with a trap which snaps closed to catch an insect. This insect is its food. It can stay closed after catching the insect for a period of twenty or thirty days in some cases. When the fly trap is about to reopen, it can take a while to become fully open. It can close rapidly if an insect goes in it when reopening.

• Imagine seeing large glaciers move across the land, watching Indians battle, seeing the Pilgrims arrive, watching the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and hippies all in one lifetime? Well you could. That is, if you were a bristle cone pine. They can live to be 4,600 years old! (Let me tell you, that's quite a few more years than your math teacher!)

• Ah, now let's settle back, close our eyes and picture this.

  You're taking a leisurely stroll deep in the woods. You see a gigantic shape looming in the distance. You slowly push the leaves aside to reveal a HUGE flower.

  If this ever happened, you'd have been lucky enough to see the titan arum. It is a monster. If it was part human, you would NOT want to mess with it! It's actually taller than Shaq and Michael Jordan! It is NINE feet tall, and THREE feet across! WOW!

• This fact is unbelievable! Imagine a water lily that can grow up to be 6 feet across!!! The Amazon water lily has a lip around the leaf that is 6 inches high. The underside of this magnificent plant is a rich purple.

• The descending roots of a strangler fig encircles the trunk of its host. The fig kills the host tree and the dead tree rots away. All that's left is the fig roots shaped in a circle.

Sources:

Attenborough, David. The Private Life of Plants. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. 1995

Limburg, Peter R. Poisonous Plants. Julian Messner: New York. 1976

Selsam, Millicent E. Plants That Heal. William Morrow and Company. 1959

Waters, John F. Carnivorous Plants. Franklin Watts: New York. 1974