What Plants Do

Small Plants

Small plants, like the grass, or small flowers on in the grass, or that grass verge you see along the road; all the plants you see at ground level provide a hubbub of wildlife - from insects to small rodents and beetles. The grass itself provides a natural carpet we can walk on during the summer months (personally, I wouldn't do it in winter).

Larger plants, like flowering plants in a flower bed for example, provide colour through the months they are in their optimum cycles for. They flower, attracting more wildlife to the area (say it's your garden) and therefore increasing your biodiversity in the habitat.

Here's a time-lapse video on YouTube from GPhase of a plant's growth from seed/bean:

Food

Plants (and trees) make their own food, so they can grow as big as they need. This is done through photosynthesis. When this occurs, the plants take in carbon dioxide and water, and release glucose and oxygen. This is the opposite of what happens during respiration.

What Else do Plants do?

Plants can also give us fruit and nuts. From apples and bananas, to mangos and pears. From walnuts to chestnuts. From commonplace in the UK, to the exotic. They provide us (and the local habitats where they grow) with a source of food. We can eat them, make drinks with them, and more. Nuts are also available off of plants.

From seeds, plants can give us oils or butters. Flora is a well recognised brand that produces butter that is dairy free, and solely made from sunflower oil, or other plant-based materials. We can get various oils from things like olives, rapeseed, sunflowers and vegetables.

Medicinal purposes have long been a major benefactor of plants. Homeopathic medicines can be made to treat wounds, or treat the common cold (using echinacea helps maintain your health with the onset of a cold).

Other uses include tea from tea bushes, cotton wool (makes our jumpers for the winter), and wood from trees.

Trees

Trees are great. They rely on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to process into their system, and release masses of oxygen to the atmosphere. They soak up tonnes of water every day, which they use to keep the leaves green, as well as helping in the process of photosynthesis.

There are many benefits to having trees around. They can provide shelter when it rains, or a canopy when it's sunny. But also, and more importantly, they can provide a house for wildlife. Birds will make nests in trees that are suitable for them to live in. Not only that, but other wildlife such as squirrels will nest there too.

Interesting fact: a mature oak tree is capable of soaking up to 50 gallons of water a day. It is often cited that one of the reasons the UK has more flooding is because the oak trees have been chopped down to make way for agriculture or housing in the area.

Deforestation

Deforestation is where trees are cut down, and used for manufacturing processes and to make paper. The only trouble is, the trees aren't replaced. This is deforestation.

A lot of deforestation is done on a grand scale. These are areas like the Amazon forest in Brazil, in Ethiopia where the forest cover went from 35% in the early 20^th Century to just 4% at the turn of the 21^st Century. Russia has over a fifth of Earth's forest, and boasts the largest forested area (12 million square kilometres), but fires and deforestation are devastating it. Other places including Papua New Guinea and South Sudan are also included.

Find out more about deforestation by visiting the related page.