How do Plants Get Their Food?

Plants have "factories" to manufacture their food, and these factories are the leaves. Leaves of fruit trees manufacture the food which helps to make fruit. Both peaches and maple sugar, for example,

are sweet. So peach and maple leaves must be able to make sugar.

They do this by taking materials from the air and the ground.

One of these materials is carbon dioxide, a gas which is taken from the air. The other material is water, which comes from the soil. From the water and carbon dioxide the leaves manufacture sugar. This process of making food is called "photosynthesis".

According to BBC, photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that takes place inside a plant, producing food for the plant to survive. Carbon dioxide, water and light are all needed for photosynthesis to take place. Photosynthesis happens in the leaves of a plant.

Many kinds of plants seem to have no sugar in them because the sugar is soon changed to other kinds of food, such as starch and protein.

The food factory needs machines, and the machines of the leaf are many little green bodies called "chloroplasts". They are green because they have in them a green matter called "chlorophyll". The power that runs the machines is sunshine.

The roots of the plant take water from the soil. The water goes through the roots, through the stems and branches, and then into the veins of the leaves. The veins carry water to the cells. This is where the chloroplasts are.

Veins also carry the food which the leaves have made and not used to storage places such as roots, fruits and seeds.

Leaves must also get rid of waste materials. The air that goes into a leaf has carbon dioxide in it. When the sun is shining, the leaves use the carbon dioxide to make sugar. The rest of the air, with additional oxygen, is given off through the stomata, which are openings between cells on the underside of the leaf.