Fascinating Plant Facts
1. The world's oldest plant is King's Holly in southwestern Tasmania, thought to be 43,000 years old.
2. the 'Eternal god' redwood tree in Prairie Creek, California, is 12,000 years old.
3. Algae are the world's simplest plants. They have no roots, stems or leaves and a large number consists of just one cell. Such plants often float freely in lakes and oceans. Huge number of Algae in the sea make the oxygen we breathe, even for those people who live far from the coast.
4. The very first plants appeared on Earth more than 3550 million years before mosses and ferns appeared on land. These were tiny algae that floated in the sea. All other plants have evolved from them.
5. Saffron is said to have been introduced in Kashmir during the reign of Raja Lolitaditya (724-760 A.D.). It is perhaps the most expensive of spices because it takes about 1,80,000 Crocus Flower heads to make one pound (450 grams) of saffron.
6. The Kurinji flower, belonging to the family of Acathancea, of the Western Ghats is exclusive to India. It flowers in a cyclic process of 12 years. In early 2006, the flowers bloomed and the Sahyadri ranges and the Kodaikanal hills in Tamil Nadu saw a profusion of these flowers.
7. Air holes in a leaf open during the day abnd close at the night.
8. Some papaya trees bear fruits and some do not. Do you know WHY??? Among papaya trees, some are male trees and some are female trees. Only female trees can bear fruits and not the male ones. The flower of the male tree plays the role of fertilising the flower growing on the female tree.
9. Petrified Forest. The petrified forest in Arizona, USA, is the world's largest collection of fossilised wood. It originated 200 million years ago when 200 ft (60 m) tall trees were toppled by storms and became civered in deposits of mud and sand, which hardened into shale and sandstone. Silica from volcanic ash penetrated the buried logs. About 70 million years ago the land began to rise and the covering rocks gradually stripped away revealing the logs we see today. Some are as much as 100 ft (30 m) long.
10. Mimosa Pudica is better known as the sensitive plant. When a leaf is touched the whole plant appears to wilt in seconds. Later the plant returns to normal.
