50 Interesting Facts about Plant

Plants form the backbone of the earth’s ecosystem. They provide oxygen and food, which is necessary for survival on earth. Plants can come in various forms such as trees, shrubs, flowers, etc. Here is a list of fun and interesting facts about plants which you didn’t know.

Interesting Plant Facts:

• An average size tree can provide enough wood to make 170,100 pencils.
• The first type of aspirin, painkiller and fever reducer came from the tree bark of a willow tree.
• 85% of plant life is found in the ocean.
• Bananas contain a natural chemical which can make people feel happy.
• Brazil is named after a tree.
• The Amazon rainforest produces half the world’s oxygen supply.
• Cricket bats are made of a tree called Willow and baseball bats are made out of the wood of the Hickory tree.
• Dendrochronology is the science of calculating a tree’s age by its rings.
• Caffeine serves the function of a pesticide in a coffee plant.
• Apple is 25% air, that is why it floats on water.
• Peaches, Pears, apricots, quinces, strawberries, and apples are members of the rose family.
• Apple, potatoes and onions have the same taste, to test this eat them with your nose closed.
• The tears during cutting an onion are caused by sulfuric acid present in them.
• The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.
• The first potatoes were cultivated in Peru about 7,000 years ago!
  
• The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours.
• Strawberry is the only fruit that bears its seeds on the outside. The average strawberry has 200 seeds.
• Leaving the skin on potatoes while cooking is healthier as all the vitamins are in the skin.
• Around 2000 different types of plants are used by humans to make food.
• Small pockets of air inside cranberries cause them to bounce and float in water.
• Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world; it can grow 35 inches in a single day.
• A sunflower looks like one large flower, but each head is composed of hundreds of tiny flowers called florets, which ripen to become the seeds.
• Cabbage has 91% water content.
• Banana is an Arabic word for fingers.
• The California redwood (coast redwood and giant sequoia) are the tallest and largest living organism in the world.
• Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is one of the oldest living tree species, it dates back to about 250 million years ago.
• The word pineapple comes from European explorers who thought the fruit combined the look of a pinecone with flesh like that of an apple.
• The Elephant grass found in Africa is named so as it is 4.5 meters high and even elephants can hide in it.
• Eating lots of onions will make you sleepy, as it acts as a sedative!
  
• Cucumber is a fruit and not a vegetable since it has seeds in the centre.
• A cluster of bananas is called a hand and consists of 10 to 20 bananas known as fingers.
• Vanilla flavouring comes from the pod of an orchid, Vanilla planifolia.
• The first certified botanical garden was founded by Pople Nicholas III in the Vatican City in 1278 AD.
• There are over 300,000 identified plant species and the list is growing all the time.
• Oak trees are struck by lightning more than any other tree.
• Carrots were originally purple in colour.
• During the 1600s, tulips were so valuable in Holland that their bulbs were worth more than gold. The craze was called tulip mania and caused the crash of the Dutch economy.
• The baobab tree found in Africa can store 1,000 to 120,000 litres of water in its swollen trunk.
• Oak trees don’t produce acorns until they are 50 years old.
• Caffeine serves the function of a pesticide in a coffee plant.
• At over 2000 kilometres long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth.
• The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.

Enjoyed these amazing facts about plants? Share them with your friends!