What Is A Plant? |
This may seem like an absolutely ridiculous question to most, seeing as plants are certainly a common thing to come across in our everyday lives. But, what make's a plant, a plant? There are some very important and definitive traits that make plants different from other living organisms, let's take a look. |
PhotosyntheticPlants are beautiful living organisms that are incredibly special and important to the human race for providing us with oxygen through photosynthesis. Unlike human cells, plants possess a special green pigment called chlorophyll a and b that aid it with photosynthesis, and gives most plants their famous "greeny" complexion.
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Eukaryotes Plants are eukaryotic, meaning they have an organized nucleus that is encased with a cell membrane and a cell wall that is composed of cellulose. This separates and defines plants because it makes them more complex and more advanced than a lot of other living organisms.
DependentIn order to survive plants are dependent on sunlight, water, minerals, gas exchange and their transportation of water and nutrients throughout their plant bodies.
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Stationary Plants are often anchored in the ground and don't tend to move about like us humans do, thus making most plants stationary.
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The Plant Life Cycle
Sporophyte StageThe Sporophyte stage is the splitting of the plants genetic material, where the plant goes through meiosis to create spores for the Gametophyte stage.
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Gametophyte StageThe Gametophyte stage is where the spores go through mitosis and create a new, copied version of male and female plants to reproduce in the future and continue the cycle. Then when the plants go through actual fertilization, that is where the cycle restarts and that is where plants receive their variation in genetics.
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Alteration of Generation
Plants go through a special life cycle called Alternation of generation. This cycle consists of two phases called the diploid phase and the haploid stage. The reason it's called an Alternation of generation is because during the course of the plants life cycle, plants must alternate between mitosis and meiosis to produce two types of reproductive cells-gametes and spores.