The Most Interesting Facts about Plants

Plants surround us everywhere: when we go to work, when walking with a child, we go on a journey, and even at home each person will have at least one living flower.

Today we learn a few interesting facts about plants.

There are more than 10 thousand poisonous plants on our planet. Mankind has long been trying to use these properties to hunt animals and defend against enemies. In fiction, the curare poison is often mentioned, which was used by the Indians of South America, treating them with arrowheads. It consisted of a mixture of several extracts of chilibuk plants (strykh nose, chondodermone). And the natives in Central Africa used the poison from the seeds of another poisonous plant – the strophete. This terrible poison possessed incredible power and instantly killed the largest animals.

Most poisonous plants are found in tropical countries. In the forests of the United States, as well as in the Antilles, the present “tree of death” grows – marcinella. It emits such poisonous substances that are dangerous to humans: it is worthwhile to stand a little near this tree and you can earn severe poisoning.

But even in the temperate zone a lot of poisonous plants grow. The most dangerous are the family of Solanaceae: belladonna, dope, whitened, and also an umbrella family: canine parsley, poisonous milestone, hemlock spotted.

2. It turns out that there is an amazing mushroom on the planet Earth, which resembles a chicken to taste. The gray-yellow trotter grows in clusters, and the width of its hat reaches 40 cm. In some parts of Germany and North America it is considered a delicacy.
3. Surprisingly, the plant of Ceratonia always gives the same seeds which weigh 0.2 g. In ancient times they were used by jewelers as weights, and now this measure is called karat.
4. Our planet is full of amazing plants. One of them is the rainbow eucalyptus from the island of Mindanao. It is famous for the extremely beautiful colorful color of the bark. The bark of all eucalypts eventually flakes in the form of a multitude of narrow bands, and in place of the old, peeled off a new bark appears. As she ages, she changes her color. Initially, the bark has a bright green or dark green color, as it grows and ages it turns blue, purple, and then pink-orange. At the end of its existence, the cortex acquires a brownish-crimson hue.
5. Probably, every person in his life heard about such a long and amazing tree as a baobab. It grows mostly in African savannahs. This is the thickest tree on the planet Earth. Its average height is about 18-25 m, and the circumference of the trunk at this height is more than 10 meters. There are even specimens with a circumference of 50 m in the girth! The life span of the baobab ranges from a millennium to 5.5 thousand years.
6. Rabid cucumber – a plant belonging to the family of pumpkin, which lives on the shores of the Black and Mediterranean seas. He got his name thanks to an unusual way of dispersing seeds: a ripe cucumber fruit, even with a light touch, jumps off the leg and a mass of mucus with seeds is thrown out of the hole with a force of 12 meters.
7. Bamboo is the fastest growing tree in the nature of our planet. It grows in South and East Asia and a day increases its height by 0.75-0.9 m / day.
8. The most ancient plant on Earth is seaweed. They exist about 1 thousand million years.
9. The nature of our planet has created many amazing plants. One of them is a miracle tree called rattan. Her very thick climbing stems stretch for distances up to 300 meters.
10. There are many parasites among plants. Dodder is a parasite that does not have its own leaves and roots. It feeds exclusively on the juices of its owner, whose stalk she wraps.
11. Yareta – an unusual, strange plant that grows in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina. Below 3000-4000 meters above sea level, you will not find it. In appearance this plant seems huge, however, in fact, it is a set of separate shoots. Local residents use Yareta as fuel for cooking.
12. Lovelace of India often use a unique tree keppel. Its fruits are extremely fragrant: it is worth trying them and the person begins to smell like violets.
13. It’s amazing, but with just one tree you can make more than 160 thousand pencils!
14. On our planet there is a very large predatory plant that can digest mice, frogs and even birds. It belongs to the family of non-penta and grows in the forests of Asia.
15. Many years ago, Leonardo da Vinci derived a curious rule that states that the square of the diameter of the trunk of any tree is equal to the sum of the squares of all diameters of branches taken at the same height. Later, the scientists confirmed this rule, but with one difference: the degree in this formula is not always equal to two, but fluctuates within the values of 1.8 – 2.3.
16. On the water surface of the Amazon there is an unusual plant Victoria, belonging to the family of water-lily. Its leaves reach three meters in its diameter, and they can withstand weight of 25-30 kg!
17. The largest flower of the planet is Rafflesia Arnoldi. It belongs to the parasites and lives in the jungles of Malaysia. Diameter of Arnoldi reaches one meter, and weight – 7 kilograms. This unusual plant spreads the smell of rotten meat, which attracts flies.
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19. The famous cashew tree Piranzhi is one of the most interesting landmarks of the planet Earth. It is located on the territory of almost 2 hectares near the city of Natal in Brazil. This tree is 177 years old. He was planted by a fisherman in 1888, who did not know that the Piranzhi had a genetic mutation. Unlike their brethren, the branches of this tree, when touching the ground, start to take root and grow further.
20. The most dangerous stinging plant, which can kill even a horse, is the New Zealand nettle tree. It injects into the skin of its prey a lot of strong poisons, among which there is formic acid and histamine.
21. In the forests of Brazil, there is a tree called the “milk nipple”. If it is stabbed with a knife, vegetable milk will flow from the bark. The tree is able to give 4 liters of milk at a time. It can be eaten, but first it must be boiled and diluted with water.

Plants are the most common living beings of our planet. They number more than 375 thousand species. We have considered only a small fraction of all the amazing facts about plants, but nature is still full of many surprises.