Reasons

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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.

 

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A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.

 

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Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.

 

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Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.

 

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The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

 

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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.

 

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Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.

 

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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.

 

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The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Leaves of the Sumatra breadfruit tree are notched when they first form, yet have no indentations when the leaves mature.

 

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The Sitka spruce is Britain's most commonly planted tree.

 

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The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.

 

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The Saguaro Cactus, found in the Southwestern United States doesn't grow branches until it is 75 years old.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which means the poppy that brings sleep.

 

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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.

 

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The tree dictated on the Lebanese flag is a Cedar.

 

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Of the 15,000-odd known species of orchids in the world, 3,000 of them can be found in Brazil.

 

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The telegraph plant of Asia has leaves that flutter constantly, even when there is no breeze.

 

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The giant puffball, lycoperdon giganteum, produces 7,000,000,000,000 spores, each of which could grow into a puffball a foot in diameter and collectively cover an area of 280,000 square mile, greater than the size of Texas. Fortunately, only one of the spores actually becomes a puffball, and all the others die.

 

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The slippers plant (bulbo stylis) of Haiti looks like a pair of fuzzy slippers.

 

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The primary purpose of growing rice in flooded paddies is to drown the weeds surrounding the young seedlings. Rice can, in fact, be grown in drained areas.

 

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The fragrance of flowers is due to the essences of oil which they produce.

 

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While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonard da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk revealed its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture.

 

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The bark of a redwood tree is fireproof. Fires that occur in a redwood forest take place inside the trees.

 

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A plant in central Australia, the candlesticks of the sun, grows a candle-shaped flower once every 7 years.

 

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The woman's tongue of Zanzibar is a plant with pods full of seeds which rattle continuously.