(10/5) Life Science - Lesson 2 Classifying Plants
Classifying Plants
You have learned some of the ways in which scientists classify animals. Scientists classify plants in similar ways.
You have probably eaten sunflower seeds and apples. The sunflower is a plant that reproduces from seeds. So is the apple tree. Apple trees produce apples, which are their fruit. Inside each apple are seeds that can grow into new apple trees.
Mosses and liverworts are plants that reproduce from spores. They are small plants with tiny leaves and stems that grow very close to the ground. Ferns are another group of plants that reproduce from spores. Spores form on the leaves, or fronds, of ferns. When a spore drops off into the soil it may grow into a new fern plant.
Flowers or Cones
Scientists divide seed plants into two more large groups-- plants with flowers and plants with cones. Most plants form seeds in parts of flowers, but some plants, such as pine trees, make seeds in cones.
Plants that form seeds in cones are called coniferous plants. Most coniferous trees are also evergreens. Evergreen trees do not lose their leaves in winter. A pine tree's needle-shaped leaves stay on the tree all year long. A deciduous tree loses its leaves each year before winter.
Flowering plants have different kinds of flowers and seeds. Flowers have different colors, sizes, shapes, and numbers of petals. Seeds also have different sizes, shapes, and colors. Poppy seeds are small, round, and black. An avacado seed is big, egg shaped, and brown. Scientists use these differences and others to classify plants.
