(G12) Gen. Bio 2

• Plants are living things that have roots, stems, and leaves, and some have flowers.
• Plants are made of cells that have cell walls, a large central vacuole, and chloroplasts.
• Chloroplasts contain a green pigment called chlorophyll that plays a role in photosynthesis.
• Some products from Angiosperms include foods, sugar, chocolate, cotton cloth, linen, rubber, vegetable oils, perfumes, medicines, cinnamon, flavorings (toothpaste, chewing gum, candy, etc.), dyes, lumber.
• The flower parts of Angiosperms include the petals, sepals, stigma, stamens, and pistil.
• The chemical equation for photosynthesis is: 6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6 + 6O2.
• There are between 260,000 and 300,000 plant species identified to date.
• The oldest fossil plants are about 420 million years old and are descendants of algae that were aquatic.
• Cone-bearing plants, such as pines, probably evolved from a group of plants that grew 350 million years ago.
• Flowering plants did not exist until about 120 million years ago.
• Problems faced by plants include drying out, making food, reproduction, gravity & support, and getting water & nutrients.
• Solutions to these problems include a waxy cuticle, stomata, formed leaves, and developing spores & seeds.
• Protections and support for leaves include bark (cork) and vessels, cell walls (cellulose), roots, and vessels.
• Vascular plants have tube-like structures that carry water, nutrients, and other substances through the plant.
• Nonvascular plants do not have these tube-like structures and use other ways to move water and substances.
• Binomial Nomenclature is a two word system of naming things, for example, Quercus alba = white oak.
• Seedless nonvascular plants don’t grow from seeds, are only a few cells thick, and are 2 to 5 cm in height; they reproduce by spores.
• Pioneer species are the first organisms to grow in new or disturbed areas.
• As pioneer plant species grow and die, decaying material builds up, which, along with the slow breakdown of rocks, builds soil, allowing other organisms to move into the area.
• Seedless vascular plants reproduce by spores and have long, tube-like cells that carry water, minerals, and food to cells throughout the plant.
• Ferns are the largest group of seedless vascular plants and their leaves are called fronds.
• Ferns produce spores in structures on the underside of fronds.
• Ferns that lived 360 million years ago grew as tall as 25 m, but today, the tallest tree ferns are about 3 m to 5 m in height.
• Seed plants have leaves, roots, stems, and vascular tissue; produce seeds.
• Dried stems of one type of horsetail can be ground into flour.
• Peat and sphagnum mosses are used for gardening and as soil conditioners.
• Dicots have two cotyledons and include shade trees, fruit trees, petunias, geraniums, snapdragons.
• Club Mosses, Ground Pines, and Spike Mosses have needle-like leaves and produce spores at the end of the stem in structures that look like tiny pine cones.
• Rhizomes and young fronds of ferns are edible.
• Ferns and other seedless vascular plants are used in folk medicines to treat bee stings, burns, fevers, and even dandruff.
• Angiosperms are vascular plants that flower and have a fruit that contains one or more seeds.
• The division of angiosperms is Anthophyta and includes monocots and dicots.
• Gymnosperms are the oldest trees alive and produce seeds not protected by fruit, known as “naked seeds”, and do not have flowers.
• Monocots have one cotyledon used for food storage, such as corn, rice, wheat, barley, lilies, orchids, grass.
• Some products from gymnosperms include lumber, paper, soap, varnish, paints, waxes, perfumes, edible pine nuts, medicines.
• Biennials complete their life cycles within two years.
• Perennials take more than two years to grow to maturity.
• Decaying plants are compressed into a substance called peat, which forms from the remains of sphagnum moss and is used as a low-cost fuel in places like Ireland and Russia.
• Ferns are used for weaving material and basketry.
• Annuals complete their life cycles in one year.