PLANTS AND

ANIMALS

In this you will learn about plants

and animals
 PLANTS

– A plant needs sunlight, carbon dioxide, minerals and water to

make food by photosynthesis. A green substance in plants called 
chlorophyll traps the energy from the Sun needed to make food.
Chlorophyll is mostly found in leaves, inside plastids, which are
inside the leaf cells. The leaf can be thought of as a food factory.
Leaves of plants vary in shape and size, but they are always the
plant organ best suited to capture solar energy. Once the food is
made in the leaf, it is transported to the other parts of the plant
such as stems and roots.
 FLOATING PLANTS

– A floating plant pond is a modified maturation pond with floating (macrophyte)

by

plants. Plants such as water hyacinths or duckweed float on the surface while the
roots hang down into the water to uptake nutrients and filter the water that flows
by.
–
Water hyacinths are perennial, freshwater, aquatic macrophytes that grow especially fast
in wastewater. The plants can grow large: between 0.5 to 1.2 m from top to bottom. The
long roots provide a fixed medium for bacteria which in turn degrade the organics in the
water passing by.
– Duckweed is a fast growing, high protein plant that can be used fresh or dried as a food
for fish or poultry. It is tolerant of a variety of conditions and can significantly remove
quantities of nutrients from wastewater.
 FIXED PLANTS

– Some plants like water-lily and lotus have roots that fix the
plants in the mud at the bottom of the pond. They are known as
fixed aquatic plants. Roots of such plants are fixed in the soil at
the bottom of a pond. They have plate-like leaves that float over
the surface of water. The stomata in the leaves are on the upper
side. The stems are hollow and very light. This helps the leaves to
float. The stems are very flexible. They bend with the flow of
water so they do not get damaged by strong current .
 UNDERWATER PLANTS

– Aquatic plants are plants that have adapted to living in aquatic environments (

saltwater or freshwater). They are also referred to as hydrophytes or macrophytes to
distinguish them from algae and other microphytes. A macrophyte is a plant that grows
in or near water and is either emergent, submergent, or floating. In lakes and rivers
macrophytes provide cover for fish , substrate for aquatic invertebrates, produce oxygen
, and act as food for some fish and wildlife.

– Aquatic plants require special adaptations for living submerged in water, or at the
water's surface. The most common adaptation is the presence of lightweight internal
packing cells, aerenchyma, but floating leaves and finely dissected leaves are also
common.
 ANIMALS

– Animals (also referred to as metazoa) are multicellular eukaryotic organisms that

form the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals 
consume organic material , breathe oxygen, are able to move, can 
reproduce sexually , and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during 
embryonic development . Over 1.5 million living animal species have been 
described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there
are over 7 million animal species in total. Animals range in length from
8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft). They have complex interactions
 with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The kingdom
Animalia includes humans, but in colloquial use, the term animal often refers only
to non-human animals. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology.