Category Botany

You may think there is not much you can do to help save plants. But there are lots of things you can do. When you go on a hike, stay on the path. Leaving the path harms the plants.

Sometimes you can help plants by not doing things. Do not pick or dig up wild flowers and other plants. Even though some are still plentiful, others are becoming rare. Enjoy wild flowers by taking pictures, or by drawing them. Buy seeds gathered in national parks or from seed companies. Then other people can enjoy the wild flowers, too.

Remind grown-ups to be very careful with campfires or outdoor cooking. Make sure that fires are out completely before you leave the area. If the weather has been very dry, don’t build fires at all. And when you leave camp, take all your rubbish with you to a litter bin.

Don’t break off limbs or peel bark from trees. The outside bark protects a tree from harmful insects and fungus. The inner bark moves food from the leaves to the roots. Peeling off a tree’s bark or breaking off its limbs can kill the tree.

You can help save trees by recycling. Many communities have recycling programmes. This means that used paper is picked up and taken to factories that use it to make new paper. Your family can recycle junk mail, old magazines, boxes, cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes, and even the tags from teabags.   

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People are working together in many ways to save the world’s plants.

Some people work directly with plants. Growers trade seeds with one another to help a species’ chances to survive. They also grow endangered plants in greenhouses. Then they replant the plants in the wild. Sometimes, people build fences around rare plants in the wild to keep away animals that may eat or trample them.

Many groups work to protect plants. These include the United Nations, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). They inform governments and people about endangered plants and raise money to help save them.

Many governments have passed laws to protect plants. These laws protect endangered plants and animals from hunting, collecting, and other activities that could harm them or their communities. Many countries also have signed an agreement called CITES. By signing this agreement, they promise not to buy or sell endangered plants or animals, or products made from them.

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The forest rangers are worried. The weather is hot and there has been no rain for a long time. They know the forest is as dry as dust. It would take only a tiny spark or a lightning strike to turn the whole forest into a roaring, raging sea of fire.

From their watchtower high above the trees, the rangers see a thin spiral of smoke. Fire! There’s a fire in the forest!

A quick call for help goes out. Firefighters rush to the blaze, in trucks. Working quickly, they battle the blaze with streams of water and shovelfuls of soil. They chop down trees and dig up the ground to keep the fire from spreading.

Overhead, aeroplanes swoop over the fire, dropping water and chemicals on it. Other planes bring firefighters called smoke jumpers. They parachute into places that the firefighters on the ground can’t reach.

At last, after many hours or sometimes many days, the fire is out. Thousands of trees have been saved. Thousands of trees have been destroyed.

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Imagine a world in which most of the trees are dead, where leaves and flowers are spotted with disease, and fruits can’t grow. It wouldn’t be a very nice world. But many scientists fear that’s what our world may be like someday – if we don’t do something now about air pollution.

Air pollution begins when gases from cars, factories, lawn mowers, and burning wood enter the air. Acid rain forms when certain chemicals from air pollution rise up and mix with the water in the clouds.

The rain or snow that falls from these polluted clouds harms the leaves of trees. The trees slowly lose their leaves and die. Acid rain also soaks into the soil and damages plants and crops. Many of the world’s forests – especially the pine forests of northern Europe – are suffering from the effects of acid rain.

Air pollution is a very serious problem. But scientists and many other people are working very hard to clean up the air and keep it clean, for the sake of all the world’s people and plants.

Vanishing Tropical Rain Forests

Everywhere in the world people are taking over more land. In tropical rain forests, parts of the forest are cut down and burned to make room for crops. After a time, the soil in these parts is no longer good for growing crops. Then the people move on to another place. It is hard for new plants to grow in the poor soil. Without plants and trees, the soil that is left washes away.

People also destroy tropical rain forests to get timber. The trees that grow in these forests provide valuable wood. Every day, in many countries, people are cutting down trees that have taken years and years to grow.

In the world’s biggest tropical rain forest, the Amazon rain forest in South America, people are building a giant motorway. Trees are being cut down to build the motorway. When the road is finished, more people will travel into the rain forest. This may lead to even more destruction.

The world’s tropical rain forests are home to many kinds of rare animals. They may have lived there for many thousands of years in the safety of the trees. But now the tropical rain forest is disappearing fast. Scientists believe that some rain forest animals will die out even before they have been discovered!

Threats from People

People are a plant’s worst enemies. This is mainly because people want or need things that can be made from plants.

Many kinds of plants are becoming rare because of their beauty. People often dig these plants up and take them home. The beautiful flowers of orchids and some cactuses have made them targets for collectors. The rare Cooktown orchid of Australia, though protected, is picked by collectors.

Great numbers of palm trees are destroyed for their stems, which are made into furniture, and for their fruit. Hundreds of types of palms are endangered today.

People kill many plants for use in medicines. The Pacific yew was once the source of a drug that doctors use to treat cancer. But getting the drug threatened these trees so much that researchers found other ways of making the drug.

People kill plants when they develop land. Lots of land is used for building. Even more is changed into farmland or grazing land for cattle and other animals. As the population increases, people build more roads, houses, factories, mines, shopping centres, and car parks.

But plants need their own special place to live in, too. They need the right kind of soil, the right temperature, and the right amount of rainfall. They need the right habitat. When habitats disappear, the animals that live there often disappear too. If we destroy too many natural habitats, we may lose many of the plants and animals in our lives.

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