Plant Basics

Plant Basics

Plant Basics
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 5 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	5.97

Vocabulary

challenging words:

chlorophyll, drainage, photosynthesis, xylem, provides, dioxide, carbon, pipes, roses, potting, rarely, foggy, better, terrarium, collection, layer

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Other Languages
Spanish: Nociones Básicas de las Plantas

Plant Basics
By Sharon Fabian

¹     Suppose we didn't eat out our breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, or at least a burger and fries now and then. Could we survive? People and animals all depend on food to provide the energy we need to live. Even the smallest animal couldn't survive without food. However, there are living things that never need to eat.

²     Plants never need to eat, because they make their own food. Plants take in chemicals from the air and water, and nutrients from the soil, and perform a chemical reaction to turn them into food and oxygen. So daisies and sunflowers and roses are not just pretty to look at, they are also hard working little food factories.

³     Here is how it works. A plant takes water from the soil with its roots. The water travels up the plant through little pipes called xylem [zie-luhm]. The plant also takes carbon dioxide from the air through tiny openings in the leaves called stomata. Each leaf contains a green chemical, chlorophyll [klor-uh-fil], that takes energy from sunlight and combines it with the water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients from the soil. A chemical reaction in the leaf changes all of this into stored food energy and oxygen. This whole process is called photosynthesis [foh-tuh-sin-thuh-sis]. The word photosynthesis means "putting together with light."

Paragraphs 4 to 8:
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