Number of words: 367

1. Gymnosperm means naked seed in Greek. Gymnasium comes from the same root – no wonder people are sparsely dressed when they go to the gym.

2. Trees are big because they continue to grow all their lives.

3. If you weighed every living object on the earth you’ll find that 99.9 percent of this massive weight is plants.

Scientists reckon that there is enough oxygen around to last us about 3,000 years. After that, without plants to make more oxygen, we’d all be gasping.

4. Touching a touch-me-not leaf triggers an electrical current inside the leaf. This empties all the liquid out of the cells into the base of the leaves and makes them collapse.

5. Why do leaves turn pretty colors and fall in the autumn? The leaves are pushed by the tree. In cold countries it’s tough for trees in the winter. They find it hard to suck up water from the cold soil. It’s a bit like sucking ice cream through a straw. There’s no use keeping water losing leaves. The pretty colors come from leftover and unwanted chemicals in the leaves. The valuable green chloroplasts gets sucked back into the tree. The tree then makes chemicals that loosen the stalk from the branch.

6. A 1000 sq ft lawn loses 50 t of water a year through transpiration.

7. A large tree can lose 1000 liter on a single sunny day.

8. The plant deadly nightshade is also called belladonna because women used to put this poison in their eyes inorder to dilate the pupils and look more beautiful. Bella donna – means beautiful lady.

9. In every cubic meter of air that you breathe there are 10,000 + fungi spores floating around.

10. The word fruit means ‘enjoy’ in Latin.

11. Under every square meter of tropical soil are more than 40,000 seeds

12. Onions make you cry because they contain an oil that turns to vapour when you cut it. This vapour makes your eyes smart. Onions are swollen leaf bases. So are carrots and potatoes. Stores of starch that help in growth next year.

13. Out of about 380,000 plants, around 80,000 are edible. Humans normally eat only 3,000 plants.

Excerpted from Vicious Veg by Nick Arnold