Table Of ContentEYEWITNESS BOOKS EYEWITNESS BOOKS
E
Y
PLANT
E
W
I
T
DAVID BURNIE N
E
Be an eyewitness to the fascinating
S
world of plants – from desert survival
S
to turning sunlight into energy.
B
O
Find out
See O
how plants defend K
how a flower attracts insects
themselves S
Explore
the fold-out wall chart
and clip-art CD
Discover
why some plants
feed on insects
Printed in China
$16.99
USA
Discover more at
$19.99 Canada www.dk.com
Eyewitness
PLANT
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Eyewitness
PLANT
Red ginseng root
Blackberries
Gerbera
flower
Written by
DAVID BURNIE
Moss on
decaying wood
Radish
Peppers
Ornamental
dried corn Ribwort
plantain
seed heads
Opium poppy
seed heads
Redshank
flowers
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Eyewitness
PLANT
Garden
Delphinium
pansies
flowers
Written by
DAVID BURNIE
Garden yarrow
flower head
Columbine
seed heads
Aster Feverfew
flowers
DK Publishing
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Eucalyptus
Ripe fig cut Poppy leaves
in half seed
head
Field
scabious
London, new York,
MeLbourne, Munich, and deLhi
Project editor Helen Parker
Senior editor Sophie Mitchell
Senior art editor Julia Harris
Managing editor Sue Unstead
Common sorrel Managing art editor Roger Priddy
Special photography
Andrew McRobb of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK
Jane Burton, Karl Shone, and Kim Taylor
Editorial consultants
The staff of the Natural History Museum, London
and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK
This Edition
Creeping Editors Karen O’Brien, Steve Setford, Jessamy Wood Yarrow
buttercup Art editors Ann Cannings, Peter Radcliffe leaf
Managing editor Jane Yorke
Managing art editors Owen Peyton Jones, Jane Thomas
Art director Martin Wilson
Associate publisher Andrew Macintyre
Tufted Picture researchers Lorna Ainger, Angela Jones, Harriet Mills
vetch Production editors Jenny Jacoby, Hitesh Patel, Marc Staples
DTP designer Siu Yin Ho
Jacket editor Adam Powley
US editor Margaret Parrish
This Eyewitness ® Guide has been conceived by
Dorling Kindersley Limited and Editions Gallimard
First published in the United States in 1989.
This revised edition published in the United States in 2011 by
DK Publishing Ox-eye
daisy
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 1989, 2003, 2011 Dorling Kindersley Limited
11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
175433—11/10
Common
toadflax All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited.
A catalog record for this book is
available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-7566-6035-2
Color reproduction by Colourscan,
Singapore; MDP, UK
Printed and bound by Toppan Printing Co.,
(Shenzhen) Ltd., China
Lords- Flower Discover more at
and- of blue Spear
ladies echeveria thistle
44
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Contents
Bladder senna Young peas
in pod
6
What is a plant?
8
The parts of a plant
10
A plant is born
12
Bursting into bloom
14 44
A light diet Parasitic plants
16 46
A simple flower dissected Plant passengers
18 48
A complex flower Adapting to water
20 50
All sorts of flowers Surviving above the snowline
22 52
How a plant is pollinated Living without water
24 54
Strange pollinators Food from plants
26 56
From flower to fruit The story of wheat
28 58
How seeds are spread Potions and poisons
30 60
Borne on the wind The plant collectors
32 62
Spreading without seeds Looking at plants
34 64
Living leaves Did you know?
36 66
Self-defense Plant classification
38 68
Creepers and climbers Find out more
40 70
Meat-eaters Glossary
42 72
Caught in a trap Index
55
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What is a plant?
Lichen
P
lants are the key to life on Earth.
Without them, a whole host of other
organisms would soon disappear. This
is because many living things depend
on plants for food and for somewhere
to live. Plants are different, because
they make food themselves, using
energy that they collect from
This is nOT a planT
sunlight. There are two main kinds It is often difficult to
tell simple plants and
of plant. The simplest ones do not
animals apart. This
have flowers. They include mosses, plantlike organism
is a hydrozoan and
liverworts, ferns, and also conifers— lives in the sea. Its
the biggest plants that have ever branches are formed
by tiny ani mals called
existed on Earth. Compared to polyps, which have
tentacles to trap
them, flowering plants are
particles of food.
newcomers, but they have become
a huge success. Today, there are
about a quarter of a million
different kinds of flowering
plant, and they grow
almost everywhere, from
mountaintops to deserts.
This book tells their story. This is a planT
A lichen is made up
of two different organisms: Lichens
a tiny nonflowering plant called an growing on
alga, and a fungus. The algal cells limestone rock
live among the tiny threads formed
by the fungus and supply the
This Was a planT fungus with food, which they
Forests of horsetails and giant club- make using sunlight (pp. 14–15).
mosses, up to 150 ft (45 m) tall, once The fungus cannot make its own
formed a large part of the Earth’s food and would die without the
vegetation (see right). Over 300 alga. Lichens grow very slowly
million years, their buried and are extremely long-lived.
remains have gradually
turned into coal.
Horsetail COnTEMpORaRY COUsins
Ferns and horsetails are primitive plants.
They do not have flowers, but reproduce
by spores. Both first appeared nearly
300 million years ago. Although
there are still many types of
fern, only about 30 species
of horsetail live on
Earth today.
Hart’s- tongue
fern
Spores
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Microscopic
view of
duckweed
THE BIGGEST AND THE SMALLEST
The world’s most massive plants are conifers—
the giant sequoias of California, which
can reach heights of more than 300 ft
(95 m). The smallest flowering plant
is the rootless duckweed, which is
1⁄100 in (0.3 mm) across.
Ribbonlike plant body,
or thallus, divides into
branches as it grows
Garden pansy
FLOWERING
PLANTS
Unlike the other
plants on these two
LIVERWORTS pages, flowering
Liverworts are nonflowering plants have true
plants that live in damp flowers. They are
places and reproduce by unique in having
means of spores. seeds that develop
inside a protective
structure called an
ovary (p. 17), which
MOSSES
later becomes a
Mosses do not LIVING SCULPTURES
have flowers. Like Algae are simple, fruit (pp. 26–27).
liver worts, mosses non flowering plants. A The garden pansy
reproduce by diatom is a single-celled alga, is a typical
means of which has a rigid transpa rent flowering plant.
tiny spores. case, or frustule, made of silica,
a glasslike substance. This
microscope image shows
many species of diatom, each
of which has a frustule of a
different shape and pattern.
GREEN BLANKETS
Some species of aquatic Blanket weed
algae form long
chains of cells,
creating a slime
known as
blanketweed.
77
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The parts of a plant
F
lowering plants are busy 24 hours a day. During
the daytime, their leaves collect the energy in sunlight
so that they can make the food that they need to
grow (pp. 14–15). To do this, plants also need
water and minerals, which their roots collect from
the soil. Once the Sun sets, a plant cannot make
food any more. Instead, it concentrates on using
its food and on moving it to where it is needed
most. To do all these things, a plant uses
Lateral special cells that connect its roots, stems, and
(side) roots
leaves. These cells work like microscopic
pipes, and they carry everything that a
plant needs. As long as they work, the
plant will thrive, but if they get damaged
the plant may wither or die.
Fine root hairs
near the tip of
each rootlet
absorb water
and minerals
from the soil
Woody lower stem contains
lignin—a substance that
makes it strong
Main root
divides to
anchor the plant Small shoots that
in the ground sprout around the
base of a larger
Rootlet plant are known as
adventitious shoots,
Main root or suckers
New lateral
Xylem carries (side) root
water upward
Cross-seCtion
Root growth occurs at of A root
the tip of each rootlet In a root, the tube like
cells that conduct
water, minerals, or
sugars are grouped in
the center. As a root
grows, other smaller
roots branch off it, helping
to absorb water and nutrients,
and anchoring the plant in the
Phloem carries ground. All roots have a cap of
food to the slimy cells at their tip. These
growing tip cells prevent the roots from
of the root being worn away as they
grow through the ground.
88
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