Plants and Their Parts A 6-11

What do plants have in common?  Chlorophyll  allows plants to use the Sun’s energy to make their own food –Plants need water and minerals from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air  All living things are made of cells –All plant cells have certain things in common that help the plant grow

 Plant cells all have walls that help them from collapsing (it’s what helps trees and flowers stand tall) –Animal cells do not have cell walls or chlorophyll  Different kinds of cells do different kinds of jobs –Cells that all have the same job are called tissue (example: the “string” of a celery stalk)

What are the major plant groups?  Classification  the science of finding patterns among living things –Ancient scientists used to classify plants based on what they could see –In 350 B.C. Aristotle (Greek scientist) classified all plants into 3 large groups: herbs (little plants), shrubs (bigger plants), and trees (the biggest plants)

 Today technology can look inside plants and that is how they are classified today –vascular and nonvascular  Vascular  means “composed of or containing vessels”; contains veins or arteries; trees and flowering plants  Nonvascular  plants that do not have these veins or vessels; mosses

Vascular Plants

Nonvascular Plants

What are the Divisions of the Plant Kingdom?  A kingdom in the largest subdivision of living things  Scientists figured out that they could divide the vascular and nonvascular plants into smaller and smaller groups –Example: flowering and nonflowering