Six Plant Parts that Plants and People Need
Transformative Adventures for Children and Their Adults
Note: This blog is a serialization of a book titled Field Trips for All of Us: Transformative Adventures for Children and Their Adults. Here is the preface. The first field trip is Taking Education Outside.
Introduction
Flowering plants have six main parts: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. Each of these parts is composed of cells containing the same genetic information and similar molecules in similar proportions. These cells are arranged in different patterns in each plant part. These patterns support the different functions that each part performs. For example, branching supports roots and stems collecting water and sunshine (see Patterns that Connect). Putting these parts together in specific spatial relationships enables plants to do more as a system than its parts could do on their own. Gardeners, gatherers, and cooks use knowledge about plant parts in the process of growing, harvesting, storing, and preparing food. Knowing about plants also helps us understand the central roles and relationships they have in our ecosystems’ dance of interdependence. The activities in this field trip include singing a wonderful song by Banana Slug Dirt Band, helping your child(ren) keep a log of the plant parts they eat during a week, and integrating discussions about plant parts and development into other activities like eating the forest and gathering seeds.
Activities
Talking about plant parts: Before I talk about plant parts, I like to ask kids, can you tell us the names of some parts of plants? Then, I’ll repeat the names of each part they mentioned and ask them if they have any ideas about what that part does for the plant, where it usually is in relation to other plant parts, and if the part is an example of any specific pattern (e.g., tube, sheet, branch, spiral). If they’re not already doing so, I’ll suggest they look at the plants around us for ideas. If they only name above-ground parts, I’ll ask about below-ground parts. Kids will often use different names for parts than the six we describe here.
When I can, I like to record the parts they name and relate them to the six part names above as I introduce each. For example, children may name acorns, trunks, and branches. In that case, I would point out that acorns are fruits that contain seeds and that trunks and branches are both kinds of stems.
Sing along with the Banana Slug String Band: This is a great band that has written and performed many great nature-themed songs. I like to play this song for kids of all ages and ask them if they’d like to try singing along. I also like to ask kids to shout out as many plant part names as they can remember after singing Six Plant Parts that Plants and People Need.
Logging plant parts eaten over a week: Here’s a table you can print and use to help your child(ren) keep a log of all the plant parts they eat during a week.
Discussing plant parts while eating the forest, collecting seeds, and observing and identifying plants: Gathering plants for food, collecting seeds for planting, and generally observing and identifying plants all depend on some knowledge of plant parts. I like to repeat plant part names as we’re doing these activities together. The more they hear the language, the more exposure and relevant it will become for everyone. For example, “When you touch these mistletoe fruit they explode and the seeds stick to you.” “Do you see how the fruit of the yucca develops at the base of the flower?” “These coffee berries are edible, the seeds are not.” “I like to chew on these wild mint leaves.” “These yucca flowers are edible.”
Some Nature Science
So far, we’ve just said that most plants have six parts. More specifically, the first types of seed-bearing plants to evolve are called gymnosperms. Gymnosperms have roots, stems, leaves, and seeds but no flowers or fruits. Gymnosperm means naked (gymno) seeds (sperm). These naked seeds usually develop in cones of some kind and are spread by the wind. Plants called angiosperms evolved later and have flowers and fruits. These plants co-evolved with pollinators (including bees, butterflies, and birds) and seed dispersers (including birds, bears, coyotes, and rodents) developing some of the most canonical mutually beneficial relationships on Earth. The pollinators and seed dispersers get food in the form of pollen, nectar, and/or fruit and the plants get fertilized flowers. Plants produce things to meet their gifts to others (e.g., fruits, sugar, other carbohydrates) for their own needs that also meet the needs of others.
Meeting the needs of others often ends up meeting additional needs of the plant. For example, manzanita fruit, produced by manzanita trees, feeds bears who return the favor by pooping out manzanita seeds both distributing said seeds and providing them with a lovely nutrient packet of poop.
Educational Hint
Remembering, repeating, and memorizing all have something to do with each other and are not the same. Our ability to learn from our experiences depends on our ability to remember those experiences. Not reinventing the wheel depends on our ability to remember ideas. Remembering often depends on repetition. For example, when I am learning the name of a new wildflower, I often have to look up its name many times before it sticks and even then, often have to repeat the whole process each spring or summer. Memorizing is an act of deliberate remembering, often through many continuous repetitions. The important thing to remember is that while remembering is essential to learning, forced memorization is not!
A little story may help clear this up. I love lichen! They come in four distinct forms: Crustose lichens grow like a thin crust; Squamulose lichens look like squashed pebbles or scales clustered together; Foliose lichens are leaflike sheets (i.e., like foliage) and fruticose lichens are tree-like with free-standing branching tubes. When I was first working to remember these names I would say them out loud whenever I observed some lichen of that type. At some point I was asking myself are those lichens crustose, squamu… and the kids jumped in and finished for me …squamulose, foliose, or fruticose? They remembered as a result of observing me repeatedly naming my friends with no forced memorization. This should come as no surprise as this is the way children learn an average of ten thousand words by the time they are five without flashcards or other memorization techniques!
Wrap Up
In this field trip, you heard and used the names of the six basic plant parts of angiosperms. And, you had a chance to observe and think about your family's consumption of plant parts. Knowing these plant parts and their names will serve you well in future adventures gathering food and seeds and getting to know your ecosystem and how ecosystems in general work. Learning about these parts and relationships is also a jumping-off point for learning plant anatomy (i.e., plant parts and the physical relationships between them), plant development (i.e., how parts grow and change over time), plant reproduction (i.e., how plants make babies), and plant physiology (i.e., how plants function or do what they do).