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.
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