The leaves of the Victorian water lily are sometimes over six feet in diameter.
Orchids are grown from seed so small that it would take thirty thousand to weigh as much as one grain of wheat.
At last count there were about 226,000 trees in New York's Central Park.
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
The Mexican Jumping Bean is not a bean. It is actually a thin-shelled section of a seed capsule containing the larva of a small gray moth called the jumping bean moth (Laspeyresia saltitans).
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
Trees do not have life expectancies like humans. Some in California are believed to be four-thousand years old or more. How can trees live so long? The simple answer is that they're not as complex as people. So, as long as conditions are right, trees continue to live and grow, until something interrupts it.
In ancient religions, the Norsemen considered the mistletoe a baleful plant that caused the death of Baldur, the shining god of youth.
Carrageenan is a common ingredient in ice cream and toothpaste. Carrageenan is seaweed. A purple, edible seaweed, also known as Irish moss, that's found along the coasts of Northern Europe and North America. It's used as a suspending agent in foods, pharmaceuticals and liquids, as a clarifying agent for beverages, and in controlling crystal growth in frozen confections.
A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.
Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.
Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.
The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
American colonists discovered that superior candles could be made from the fruit of a squat bush growing in the sand dunes along the New England seashore. The small, grayish bayberry was picked, crushed, and boiled. It had to be skimmed several times before the pale, nearly transparent, green fat was sufficiently refined. Bayberry candles were highly prized, because so much labor and so many berries were needed to make just one candle.
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.
A person standing under an oak tree is 16 more times liable to be hit by lightning than if he had taken refuge beneath a beech tree. The oak tree has vertical roots which provide a more direct route to ground water.
The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.
The giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.
There are an estimated 285,000 species of flowering plants on Earth compared to 148,000 for all other plants. Flowering plants are very important because they provide food for herbivores - plant-eating animals - and for humans.
Leaves of the Sumatra breadfruit tree are notched when they first form, yet have no indentations when the leaves mature.
The Sitka spruce is Britain's most commonly planted tree.
The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.
The Saguaro Cactus, found in the Southwestern United States doesn't grow branches until it is 75 years old.
Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.
Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbecuing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.
Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which means the poppy that brings sleep.
An ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows. A pound of corn consists of approximately 1,300 kernels. 100 bushels of corn produces approximately 7,280,000 kernels. Corn is produced on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica
The Penguin Companion to Food. Penguin Books. <LI id=cite_note-9>
