Monocot and Dicot Activity

Look at the following pictures and decide whether the plant shown is a monocot or a dicot.

1. The world’s largest plant is the Rafflesia, also called the corpse flower because it smells like rotting meat. This flower grows in Asia and can grow up to 3 ft. across and weigh 15 pounds. It is a parasitic plant, with no visible leaves, roots, or stem.

2.Prehistoric Desert Flower, found only in the Namib Desert

This plant may look like a messy pile of leaves, but it actually only has two, which continue growing throughout the life of the plant, reaching lengths of up to 12 feet. These leaves tend to become ragged and frayed over time, split by the wind and sand to resemble a larger quantity of leaves.

3. World’s Smallest Flower, Wolffia angusta

Nope, that’s not algae, nor is it any ordinary aquatic plant. Wolffia, commonly referred to as watermeal and misidentified as duckweed, is officially the world’s smallest flower, with each bloom weighing about as much as two grains of sand.

Black Bat Flower

Also known as the devil’s flower, presumably because of its color and strange appearance, the black bat flower also produces odd-shaped blooms in shades of green and purple. This tropical flower can be found in Africa, Madagascar and northeast South America.

5. World’s Deadliest Flower, Belladonna

Ingest any part of the deadly nightshade and you’ll be swallowing atropine, hyoscine and hyoscyamine, substances that cause a series of worsening symptoms from dilated pupils to slurred speech to hallucinations, delirium, convulsions and possibly death. The pupil-dilating part was once considered desirable, hence the name ‘belladonna’, though prolonged usage was known to cause blindness. In Ancient Rome it was used as a murder weapon

6. Corn grows in "ears," each of which is covered in rows of kernels that are then protected by the silk-like threads called "corn silk" and encased in a husk. Corn is known scientifically as Zea mays. This moniker reflects its traditional name, maize, by which it was known to the Native Americans as well as many other cultures throughout the world. Although we often associate corn with the color yellow, it actually comes in host of different varieties

featuring an array of different colors, including red, pink, black, purple, and blue. 

7. Watermelon leaf. Everyone seems to love juicy watermelon in the summertime. Native to Africa, melons need warm temperatures (up to 80 degrees during the day) and a long growing season. Gardeners in colder climates can still have success in growing watermelon by starting seeds indoors and choosing short-season varieties. Days to maturity range from 70 to 90, depending on the variety.

The heaviest watermelon weighs 159 kg (350.5 lb) and was grown by Chris Kent (USA) of Sevierville, Tennessee, USA, as verified by the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth on 4 October 2013.

8. Green beans

Green beans, also known as string beans, or snap beans in the northeastern and western United States, are the unripe fruit and protective pods of various cultivars of the common bean. There are over 1000 different species of beans. Below is a picture of a few.

9. Tulips

Currently, there are around 75 wild species of tulips and 150 species in total with over 3000 varieties.

Tulips are perennials (a plant that lives for more than 2 years), they bloom in spring, usually for only 3-7 days.

The tulip is native to central Asia and eventually made its way to Turkey. But it was when the flower was first cultivated in the  Netherlands  that it really came to prominence.

Tulip petals are actually able to be eaten, during the Dutch famine of 1944 in WWII people often had to resort to eating sugar beets and tulips.

10. Peanuts

In a breakthrough study, researchers show that it’s not only possible to tamp down allergic reactions to peanuts, but by eating small amounts of them infants can avoid getting allergic in the first place

More studies hint that it’s possible to “train” the immune system to tolerate peanuts even if it doesn’t want to by giving children with peanut allergies small amounts of peanuts over a period of time. But researchers now report that it may be possible toprevent peanut allergies altogether. In a study published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers led by Gideon Lack, a professor of pediatric allergy at King’s College London and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital, found that non-allergic young infants who ate small amounts of peanuts at an early age had a much lower rate of peanut

allergy than those who avoided nuts altogether for five years.

11. This is what the root of celery looks like.

Vitamins and minerals - celery is very rich in vitamin K and also contains folate, vitamin A, potassium, and vitamin C. Dietary fiber - despite being mainly water, celery also provides a fair amount of dietary fiber.

12. Roots of a maple tree

Many people decide to plant these because they work well as shade, street and specimen trees. Maples are renowned for their autumn colors.  They love to put on a display of oranges, browns, yellows and reds every year. Some trees may have leaves sporting

several of these colors at once! Another desirable trait of some species is their ability to tolerate drought.

An important product made from maple trees is maple syrup, which is made from collected sap. Tap a sugar or black maple for best results. Sap can also be collected from other maple species like big leaf, boxelder, red and silver. The sap is then boiled and filtered. Depending on the species and strength of syrup desired, it can take over 50 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup.The maple is the national tree of Canada as of 1965. A stylized version is featured prominently on their flag.

13. Dandelion

Dandelion is an herb. People use the above ground parts and root to make medicine.

Dandelion is used for many conditions, but so far, there isn’t enough scientific evidence to determine whether or not it is effective for any of them.

In foods, dandelion is used as salad greens, and in soups, wine, and teas. The roasted root is used as a coffee substitute.

14.

14. Giant Sequoias which only grow in Sierra Nevada, California, are the world's biggest trees (in terms of volume). The biggest is General Sherman  in the Sequoia National Park - one behemoth of a tree at 275 feet (83.8 m), over 52,500 cubic feet of volume (1,486 m³), and over 6000 tons in weight.General Sherman is approximately 2,200 years old - and each year, the tree adds enough wood to make a regular 60-foot tall tree. It's no wonder that naturalist John Muir said "The Big Tree is Nature's forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things."

Giant Sequoias leafs

The sequoias have a matting, shallow, and wide spreading root system. 

The bark can be up to 3 feet thick.

15. Quaking Aspen: Pando (The Trembling Giant)

The Trembling Giant, or Pando, is a enormous grove of quaking aspens that takes the “forest as a single organism” metaphor and literalizes it: the grove really is a single organism. Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system. While many trees spread through flowering and sexual reproduction, quaking aspens usually reproduce asexually, by sprouting new trees from the expansive lateral root of the parent. The individual trees aren’t individuals, but stems of a massive single clone, and this clone is truly massive. Spanning 107 acres and weighing 6,615 tons, Pando

was once thought to be the world’s largest organism (now usurped by thousand-acre fungal mats in Oregon), and is almost certainly the most massive. 

Leaf of the Pando aspens.