Life Around Us
So many kinds of plants
Sort the plants around you into trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses, climbers and creepers, using the stem as the thing you look at first.
Gopu, Simmi and Raj walk to school past plants of a dozen shapes — tiny and bushy, thin and curvy, straight and tall. The chapter's trick for telling them apart is not the flower and not the leaf. It is the stem: how thick it is, whether it has turned to wood, and whether the plant can stand up on its own.
Five groups, sorted by the stem
A tree has one big trunk of wood, with branches spreading high above. A shrub is medium-sized, with several woody stems bunched close to the ground. A herb is smaller still, and its stems stay soft and green. A climber has a thin bendy stem and goes up by holding on to something else; a creeper has the same kind of stem but spreads along the ground instead.
Have a play
Four plants side by side, and the name of each kind.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
Simmi points at a rose bush with red flowers. Tree, shrub or herb?
Look for a trunk. There is no single thick trunk here — the plant splits into several stems near the ground.
The trunk is what rules a tree in or out, and it is the fastest thing to check.
Try it together
Now work out where sugarcane belongs, together.
Sugarcane grows taller than you do, so the answer is less obvious than it looks.
1.Its leaves are long, thin and flat, and its stem is not woody. Which group of plants has leaves shaped like that?
Have a go
Your turn. Toor, masoor, moong and urad are the pulses we cook as dal. The chapter says they are the seeds of which kind of plant?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.