Biosphere Community
Kindom Plants
Plants eat sunlight. Along with algae and cyanobacteria in Earth's waters, plants are the essential basis for all animal life, for plants (and these other photosynthesizers) create food energy using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. This process of photosynthesis was Earthlife's greatest creation, for it is the foundation on which virtually all other life rests.
Most plants nowadays are flowering plants (angiosperms), 
which include most trees, shrubs and herbs, grasses and flowers. Angiosperms are the most recently evolved kind of plant, and dominate terrestrial Earth. Other common groups of plants are conifers, ferns, and mosses.
Millions of years ago, enormous swamp-forests of tree-ferns and cycads were buried and gradually became the coal, oil and natural gas our civilization lives on today. We are living today on sunlight energy captured by plants and stored by Earth a very long time ago.
Plants depend heavily for their success on ancient partnerships with soil-fungi. The partnership is called mycorrhiza, which means "fungus-root." Almost all land plants receive nutrients from fungi that extend the plant's roots. The fungus, in turn, receives carbohydrates from the plant's photosynthesis. It's a classic win-win, this symbiosis. Explore further: Interliving.
| How Do Plants Defend Themselves? |
We usually regard plants as defenseless, but we are mistaken. Plants need to defend themselves from being eaten by mammals and insects, and they do.
Some plant defenses are physical, such as
• thorns
• dense growth
• thick, fire-resistant bark
But most defense by plants is chemical.
Some plants are toxic and poison any herbivore that eats them.
Many plants are able to make bad-tasting chemicals and rush them to leaves, so the herbivore will stop eating.
Some plants produce chemicals that interfere with herbivores' digestion. They get stomach sick.
Plants Can Send for Help
Plants know when they are being eaten.
When cotton plants are attacked by weevils, they give off a chemical that attracts wasps that kill those insects. Since insects and plants have been co-evolving for millions of years, this behavior is no doubt common. Corn plants do the same thing. More at Interliving
Plants Send Danger Signals to Conspecifics
As soon as a herbivore, whether grasshopper or antelope, begins eating leaves, some plants emit a volatile chemical into the air that signals others of its species to start producing their chemical defense. We know that alder, acacia, and birch trees do this, and there are no doubt many more.
When African acacia trees are browsed by giraffes, the first bites taste OK, but the leaves soon fill with bad tasting chemicals so the giraffe must stop eating on that tree.
Worse yet, the tree has signaled other acacias downwind that giraffes are in the neighborhood and they better start pumping alkaloids into their leaves. The giraffe's elegant solution is to gauge wind direction and browse only upwind, so it gets a few bites off each tree before the defenses kick in. More Here
