Seed Containers

I learned that another way to classify plants is if they have seeds or don't have seeds. If they make seeds, they are called angiosperms or gymnosperms. Gymnosperms have pinecones. Sperms means seed. Angio means container. Angiosperms have seed containers. First, we will study angiosperms.

Some examples of seed containers are fruit, nuts and flowers. How a seed container gets created is by a flower. When all the nectar is sucked out of a flower, the petals dry up and fall off. Then, it starts to get fat and turns into something like an apple or a walnut.

Here are some angiosperms we found around our house.

This is a rosemary flower.



This is a flower from the trumpet vine near our front door. The top is a flower, the next you see the petals drying up. Then on the bottom, you see the seed pod forming. All of these are happening at the same time!


A samara seed has a wing so it flys and comes off trees.


Peter drew this picture of some angiosperms.

Mosses

Today I learned that moss is in the plant kingdom and that it doesn't have any tubes. That is called nonvascular.

I think I found some moss in our backyard on the bottom of the porch cement by the grass. There was some moss in the grass, too. Moss gets water by absorbing water like a paper towel. If it dries out, it dies. We live in Tucson so moss is hard to find because it's dry and there's no water that stays around.

The grasses is always moist so that's why we found moss there.

This is a photo of some moss growing on the ground in a greenhouse near us. This place is always moist: Perfect for moss.