PEOPLE AND PLANTS
UNIT 2
TOPIC 1
PLANTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT
• What are some niches that plants play in the
environment?
• Come up with 5 niches or roles that they play. Write
them down in your notes
PLANTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT
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Plants are a crucial part of ecosystems
Plants produce oxygen
Plants remove carbon dioxide from atmosphere.
Plants a basis of most food webs.
Plants provide shelter for countless animals.
Plants clean and filter water.
Plant roots help decrease erosion or topsoil.
Plants help with transportation.
Plants are the basis for many medicines.
PLANTS FOR FOOD
• Nearly 75% of the worlds food supply is based on
seven major crops:
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Wheat
Rice
Corn
Potatoes
Barley
Cassava
sorghum
CASSAVA
SORGHUM
SEAWEED
• Seaweed contains important nutrients such as
iodine
• Used as Gelatin.
• Anything with “alginate”, “agar”, or
“carrageenan” is made with seaweed.
PLANTS FOR FIBRE
• Plants provide fibre for many needs.
- Fibre – tissue from plants from the stem, leaves, seeds, or
roots.
- Clothing, paper, shelter.
• The 3 main natural fibres are Cotton, Hemp, Flax.
COTTON
COTTON
• Cotton is the worlds most important non-edible
plant.
• Used for clothes (even space suits).
• Cotton fibres come from the plant’s seeds. Silky
fibres are strong and flexible and can easily be spun
into strands.
• Smaller fuzzy fibres are used to make rayon, plastics,
and paper.
• Rayon – manufactured regenerated cellulose fibre.
HEMP
• Hemp is the oldest cultivated fibre.
• 1 ha of hemp can produce 4X more fibre than trees
• Takes 1 year to grow crop as opposed to decades
for trees.
• Hemp paper lasts longer and can be recycled 7
times (wood based paper can only be recycled 4)
• Grows so fast that hemp actually chokes out and
kills its own weeds.
• Estimated that there are 25,000 uses for the Hemp
plant.
FLAX
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Grown in northern cooler parts of the world.
Stronger than cotton.
Makes linen paper
Grown for linseed oil, used to help dry paints and
varnish and in linoleum and printing inks.
• Interesting fact: American Dollar Bills are made of
Flax!
FLAX
MULBERRY TREE
• Silkworms love this tree.
• Bark is used in medicine to expel tape worms.
PLANTS FOR MEDICINE
• Opium Poppy
• Morphine
• Codeine
• Heroin
PLANTS FOR MEDICINE
• Pain medication
• Morphine: A pain killer from the opium poppy’s
seed pod. It cannot be manufactured.
• Codeine is found in the poppy and is used as
cough medicine or with pain killers.
• Quinine comes from the cinchona trees. Prevents
malaria, a disease carried by certain tropical
mosquitoes. 2 million people died each year from
malaria until Quinine became available.
• Aloe Vera: for burns
• Chincona trees provide Quinine, a cure for malaria
ALOE VERA
• For burns
PLANTS FOR TRANSPORTATION
• Most used plant for transportation are trees.
• Hollowed out tree logs as boats.
• Processed wood as frames for boats
LUBRICANTS
• Coconut and castor oil are used as lubricants in
cars.
RUBBER TREE
• Rubber for tires.
• Rubber for sweet kicks.
PLANTS FOR FUEL
PLANTS FOR FUEL
• Wood burned for cooking.
• Wood & Coal burned to heat homes.
• (Plant tissues fossilize to become fossil fuels.)
• Sugar in some plants can be turned into ethanol.
• Methanol is made from wood (called wood
alcohol)
• Anaerobic Digestion?
METHANOL (WOOD ALCOHOL)
PLANTS FOR FUEL
• Biodiesel refers to a vegetable oil and typically
made by chemically reacting lipids
• (e.g., vegetable oil, soybean oil, animal fat) with an alcohol
producing fatty acid esters.
BIODIESEL
BIODIESEL
Refers to a vegetable oil or animal fat based diesel fuel
ALGAE FUEL
• Based on technologies which seek to use algae or
bacteria to produce fuels by combining light,
carbon dioxide, water and nutrients through
photosynthesis
PLANTS HELP ENVIRONMENT
• Plants are producers – (food for many consumers)
• Base of many food webs
• Plants produce oxygen through photosynthesis.
• Plants prevent erosion (roots)
PLANTS HELP ENVIRONMENT
• Plants provide shelter for countless organisms
• Plants help in cleaning and filtering water
PLANTS FOR CONSTRUCTION
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Trees
wood for building homes
Canoe hulls
Fishing poles
Fishing spears
Fishing traps
Anything with wooden parts – comes from a plant
PORTABLE SAW MILL
PLANTS ARE AWESOME!
• List 5 ways in which you have used something plant
related in the past 24 hours.