Are Plants Living Things | Characteristics, Cloning & Concepts of Plants

Yes! Plants are significant for the planet and all living things. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen from their leaves, which humans and animals need to breathe. All living things need plants to live, as they eat them and live in them. Plants help to clean water too. Plants provide us food, materials for shelter, fuel to warm us, and air for breathing. The plant offers us food and a habitat for wildlife. 

Moreover, large and small animals are a significant component of our environment. Today’s article is about, are plant living things? So if you want to know about the details, keep on reading.

Plants are living things

Yes! Plants are considered living organisms because they grow, eat, move and reproduce. A fascinating thing should be mentioned that the students of 5 to 6 years think that spiders and worms are animals, but 9 to 10 years do not.

Characteristics of Plants as Living Things

• Plants can respire, move, respond to stimuli, reproduce, grow, and can adapt to a complex of living things within their environment and entire ecosystem.
• When a plant is picked or cut or an animal dies, some basic life process will continue to occur.

The plants can make sounds, even scream when cut, and sense when their leaves are burned and considered 100% garbage.

Plants, animals, and ecosystem

Plants and animals benefit each other as members of food chains and ecosystems.

For instance, flowering plants depend on bees and hummingbirds to pollinate them, while animals eat plants and sometimes make homes in them. In addition, when animals die and decompose, they enrich the soil with nitrates that stimulate plant growth.

Moreover, animals breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen back into the air. About 90% of plant species are beneficial to each other and, with fungus, spread underground in giant webs.

Read More: Tips For Planting Grass In The Fall

Future of life (cloning and synthetic organisms):

In most people’s minds, cloning is only a part of science fiction, but in reality, cloning technology is present in our environment for decades. 

More than 90% of all other species existing on the earth are considered extinct. More than a billion species of life, whether plants or animals on earth are included with the highest levels of estimations and projections.

What is Cloning?

Before we should go into details, we should know the exact meaning of cloning. The origin of cloning comes from the botany field and is used to define a similar process by which animal cloning is facilitated. 

According to plant psychologist Herbert, the word cloning is derived from the ancient word “clone” and comes from the Greek word twig, which refers to interring a plant cell to grow a new whole plant species. 

To understand the definition of cloning, now in this advanced age of technology, you don’t even need to break the microscope to notice the examples of cloned life. 

• For example, if you cut the flatworm into two halves, the two will regenerate into a new organism, and you will get two distinct genetically identical worms. 
• In plants, asexual reproduction occurs, which is the example of cloning, as some plant species reproduce by using their genes.

Scientists are researching that nearly 8.7 million species of plants and animals can reproduce themselves by cloning.

Critical Concepts of Plants as Living Things

Plants are considered living organisms because they can excrete, reproduce and also respire like animals.

• Plants respire through plant pores, called stomata. During respiration and photosynthesis, gases go in and out of the plants through stomata using diffusion, not breathing.
• Plants can also excrete by producing two gaseous waste products, i.e., oxygen during photosynthesis and carbon dioxide during respiration. Excess water is also expelled from the plant body through pores of stomata and from the surfaces of fruits and stems.
• Plants can reproduce sexually through a process called pollination. The Flowers contain male sex organs called stamens and female sex organs called pistils. Plants can either self-pollinate or cross-pollinate; self-pollination occurs when a plant’s pollen fertilizes with its ovules.
• They need food to make their food for energy by the process of photosynthesis.
• They respond to stimuli like light, water, heat, touch saltiness. 

Plant and Animal Cellular Structure

A plant cell is an example of a eukaryotic cell that contains a true nucleus and certain organelles to perform specific functions. However, some of the organelles present in a plant cell are different from other eukaryotic cells.

Plant Cellular Structure

• A plant cell is the basic unit of life in organisms of the kingdom Plantae.
• Plant cells have unique organelles called chloroplasts, which make sugar through photosynthesis.
• The plant cells are parenchyma cells, sclerenchyma cells, collenchyma cells, xylem cells, and phloem cells.
• The vacuole plays a vital role in the homeostasis of the plant cell. It is involved in controlling cell volume and cell turgor, regulating
• Cytoplasm ions and storage of amino acids, sugars, carbon dioxide, and toxic ions, and xenobiotics are sequestered.  

Animal Cellular Structure

• The animal cell consists of a cell membrane, nucleus, and fluid cytoplasm.
• It is characterized by the absence of a cell wall and other cell organelles enclosed within a cell membrane.
• The animal cell includes skin cells, muscle cells, blood cells, nerve cells, and fat cells.

Nine Rarest Plants in the World

Following are the nine rarest plants in the world.

• The Suicide palm.
• Western underground orchid.
• Golf Ball.
• Venda Cycad.
• Jellyfish tree.
• Poke me, boy tree.
• Attenborough’s pitcher plant was found at the summit of Mount Victoria in Palawan, the Philippines; this pitcher plant is one of the most prominent pitchers up to 30 cm in height.
• Ascension Island parsley fern.

Plant and animal senses

Plants and animals both have sense organs to respond to their environment.

Plant sense organs

Most plants have photoreceptors, each of which reacts very specifically to a specific wavelength of light.

These light sensors tell the plant if it is daytime or night, how long the day is, how much light is available, where the light is coming from.

Animal sense organs

• In animals, the sensory system detects signals from the outside environment and communicates them to the body via the nervous system.
• The sensory system depends on sensory receptor cells that transduce external stimuli into changes in membrane potentials.

Flowering plant seeds

Angiosperm is an example of flowering plant seeds. The typical flowering plant or angiosperm seeds are formed from ovules in the ovary or basal part of the pistil’s female plant structure.

Are Plants Living Things: FAQs

Are plants living organisms?

Yes, plants are living organisms because they can grow, eat. Move and reproduce. 

Who proved that plants are living organisms?

Jagadish Chandra Bose was a multitalented Indian scientist who was also an inventor of wireless communication. He proved by his experiments that plants are living things similar to any other life form. He confirmed that plants have a definite life cycle, a reproductive system and are aware of their surroundings. 

Are plants living things or living beings?

Anything which is made up of cell or cells is known as a living thing. Therefore all plants and animals are made of cells, so they all are living things. At the same time, the term “being” refers to human beings. So we can say humans are living beings, but we cannot say animals and plants are living beings.

Why are plants called living things?

The plants are known as living things because they can reproduce, grow, breathe, respire, move and excrete.

What do plants give living things?

Other living organisms depend on plants to live and survive. For example, plants provide animals with food and gases like oxygen that their bodies need to grow, breathe and make usable energy. Photosynthesis is a process in the presence of sunlight, by which plants prepare their food in their leaves and give off oxygen and water that they are not using.

Why is a living plant organism?

Plants are considered living things because they are formed of living cells. In addition, they show other living things such as growth, cell division, photosynthesis, various stimuli, and reproduction. They can also respire or exchange gases with the air around them.

Do plants want to live? 

Yes, they have programming to live, as does all life. The simple fact is that they have cell division, are drawn to light phototropism, and roots are removed to gravity, geotropism, and thus to water, shows symptoms to live. But here, want implies “intelligence.” Plants do not have intelligence as we know it.

Conclusion

The concept about the plants that they are living things is fascinating and legitimate. Yes, indeed, they are also living things like other organisms because if you study the perspective of quantum physics, there is nothing non-living in this three-dimensional world of matter at some level of thought, including water, computer screens, and stones. Everything has energy and is growing, expanding, like, vegetables, bacteria, and algae. They have their levels and degrees of intelligence involved to live, develop, and evolve with their environment and ecosystem.