Category Plants & Animals

It makes good sense to use local materials when you’re building a house. People who live near a forest use wood from the trees growing there. The skilful people with bamboo nearby use bamboo for many building jobs.

Bamboo is really a kind of grass. It grows up to 37 metres high, with a trunk 30 centimeters across. Many farmers in Asia live in bamboo houses and keep their chickens and pigs in bamboo cages. They water their crops with pipes made from hollow bamboo stalks.

Bamboo also helps people make buildings. Strong bamboo rods make excellent lightweight platforms. Bamboo rods covered in concrete make a sturdy framework for buildings. In China, a group called the Dai build houses that stand on stilts out of wood and bamboo.

Water plants called rushes and reeds are also very important building materials in the areas where they grow.

Without plants, life wouldn’t be as tasty. Why? Because many of the flavours, spices, and sweeteners that make food taste good come from plants.

Sugar comes mainly from two plants, sugar beets and sugar cane. Sugar beets grow in most parts of Europe where the climate is quite mild. They are shaped like fat, white carrots. Sugar beets are shredded and cooked in water. The sweet liquid that results is made into sugar.

Maple syrup comes from sugar maple trees, which grow in North America. The sweetness is in the juice, or sap, of the trees. When holes are drilled in the tree, the sap flows out.

Nearly all the spices that make your tongue tingle also come from plants. Peppermint flavour comes from oil made from the leaves of the peppermint plant. Pepper is the dried, ground-up berries of a shrub. Cinnamon is the bark of a tree. Mustard is made from the ground-up seeds of the mustard plant, a little herb with yellow flowers.

Honey comes from plants, too. Bees make it from nectar they collect from flowers.

Fruits are really the seed packages of plants. People find lots of fruits delicious. Birds and other creatures think so, too.

Sometimes we eat the whole fruit, seeds and all, but if the seed is too big or tough, we remove it. It’s easy to eat the seeds of strawberries, bananas, kiwi, and tomato fruits. But people don’t eat the seeds of apples, cherries, peaches, and dates.

When you eat lima beans, peas, or lentils, you eat the seeds of fruits. When you eat green beans or French beans, you eat the whole pod, not just the seeds inside it.

Many flowers aren’t good to eat, but cauliflower and broccoli are delicious before they come into bloom. The flowers of nasturtiums and violets taste good and make salads even prettier!

Many years ago, a boy lived with his grandmother. Every day, the boy hunted and caught a bird. Every evening, his grandmother brought a basket of corn from the storehouse. Then she prepared dinner. One day, the boy glanced into the storehouse and saw it was empty. But that night his grandmother brought a basket of corn as usual. So the next evening the boy followed her to the storehouse. He saw her lean over the basket and rubs her hand along her body. Dried corn flowed into the basket.

Before the boy could run away, she saw him. “Now that you know my secret, I must leave you,” she said. “But hear me. When I die, clear a piece of land. Bury my body in that land, and I will be back to feed the tribe.”

That night, the boy’s grandmother died. In the morning, he cleared the land. As he pulled her body towards her burial place, small plants sprang up behind it. The boy tended the plants. Months later, they were as tall as a person. Their silky hair was like his grandmother’s. And the plants produced enough corn for the whole tribe.

What is your favourite food that is a leaf, stem, or root? Lots of plants are grown for their leaves. Lettuce grows in different shapes, from long and tall to round and fat. Lettuce leaves are popular in salads. Spinach leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. They’re full of minerals and vitamins.

Stems make good food, too. Celery stalks can be cooked or eaten raw. Rhubarb stems are delicious in pie. The potato is an underground stem vegetable.

You might think an onion is a root vegetable, but it isn’t. The part you eat is really leaves. Carrots, beets, and radishes are root vegetables. They grow underground. They are popular with people all over the world.

Plants of the Northern Forest Community

The huge northern forests are mostly spruces, firs, pines, and other conifers. These trees can live where the weather is really cold. Their needle-like leaves are tough enough to hold water through the long, dry winter. The wind blows through the needles without making the trees sway too much. The sloping shape of the trees allows heavy snow to slide off without breaking branches.

Not many small plants grow in the northern forests. The soil is too poor, and there is limited sunlight. But ferns, horsetails, mosses, a few kinds of wild flowers, and such shrubs as bunchberry and cranberry can survive there.