December 11, 2009



The TREE itself is a home to many other living organisms.

Many other living creatures like beetles, bugs, ants, spiders, crickets and what not, can be found residing in the bark and limbs of a tree. There will also be a number of birds happily nesting and roosting atop. We can also find numerous varieties of small plants like ferns, mosses, orchids and curious organisms like Lichens. Then there will be many innumerable but invisible (for us) microscopic organisms like bacteria, fungi etc.

Inside the soil, especially close to the tree's roots (technically rhizosphere) there will be many insects, earthworms and soil resident microbes. When a tree falls (or is felled) they perish.

So next time before you cut a tree or one of its limbs, imagine how many "homes" are you going to destroy?

December 10, 2009

Plants @ Copenhagen


The talk of the town is about Global Warming.

Yes, we all now know (rather a very late admission) that carbon dioxide is a tricky gas. We now has decided to understand, that, for us to survive in this beautiful planet, we must STOP this gas from rising beyond a particular level. The current CO2 levels are indeed dangerous and is warming our planet.

Unlike us, plants need CO2 to make food. So their sufficient presence over Earth ensures CO2 is kept at a safer level. If there are more plants and more forest areas, they will all inhale in this excess CO2 and possibly save us. Mind you, they exhale out O2 necessary for our survival.

So, why dont you start saving the plants from today?

December 9, 2009

Plant has got a FAMILY

Like we and our siblings belongs to a particular "family", related plants also has got a FAMILY.

Plants which show close resemblance or similarities in the structure of their various key organs (like leaf, flower and fruit) has been clubbed together under a plant family. For eg: Mango and Cashew is under the family called Anacardiaceae, because they show close similarity in their key organs.

All the plants hitherto reported, has been examined by plant taxonomists and has been assigned to their respective families.

The plants in a family will share a set of common characters, more popularly referred to as "spot characters".

Each plant is DIFFERENT

Every plant is different from the other one. The difference can also be in the location where it is found. Different plants are created for different localities. Or we can say that certain plants are specialised for peculiar environments. The plants one can find in the deserts will not be seen in the forests or lakes. So, it is not just the difference in size alone, in terms of where it is growing also, plants are different. So that is why we see so many strange plants when we leave our familiar neighbourhood and visit a new place.

But despite their differences, all plants can be identified by examining their visible "organs" like leaves, flowers, stem, bark and so on. The difference in the size, shape, arrangement etc of these "organs" helps us to distinguish between plant "A" and plant "B".

It is also on the basis of these "differences", that plants have been assigned unique names (remember the botanical nomenclature in Latin).

December 7, 2009

The diversity of plants

Plants include a variety of organisms like trees, herbs, shrubs, grasses, climbers, ferns, mosses, creepers and green algae.

The SIZE of plants vary from tiny forms which are only a few millimetres in length to the giant tree forms (over 300 feet) or more in height.

It is beleived that there are currently around 300,000 different species of plants. Mind you, new species are continously being added to this list.

Plants can be found in all types of surfaces like tropical, temperate, polar regions and also in desert regions. Plants are there in fresh or salt water as well!

More importantly, where-ever they grow, they open up and hoist a GREEN UMBRELLA.

December 3, 2009

Each plant has got a name!

Like any one of us, plants also have unique names written in Latin. This is known as the botanical name or botanical nomenclature.

The botanical nomenclature is unique for each plant. That means, no two plants will have the same botanical name! For eg., the botanical name of coconut tree is Cocos nucifera, while Mango is Mangifera indica. All the plants discovered so far has been named.

You might have noticed that the botanical name has two words. Yes, the first part indicate the genus of the plant while the second part indicate the species part.

This type of naming is called binomial nomenclature, which was first put forth by the famed Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus way back in 1753