--- title: How plants grow: seeds, light, water and air — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «How plants grow: seeds, light, water and air», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A plant is a food factory: in its green leaves it takes light from the Sun, water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / How plants grow: seeds, light, water a… # How plants grow: seeds, light, water and air Lesson 56 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/56-how-plants-grow/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/0/) — A plant is a food factory: in its green leaves it takes light from the Sun, water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air, and turns them into sugar, giving out oxygen as it works; this is called photosynthesis. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/1/) — Put a broad bean in a jam jar with wet paper towel on the windowsill: it drinks, swells and splits, a root pushes down, a shoot pushes up, and it lives on the food packed inside the seed until its first leaves open. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/2/) — Here is the big surprise: a tall oak that grew from a tiny acorn is made mostly from the air, because the carbon in carbon dioxide becomes wood, while the soil gives only water and small amounts of minerals. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/3/) — Plants also move, slowly: a cress plant on the windowsill leans towards the light, and a sprouting potato in a dark cupboard sends out long pale shoots searching for it. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/4/) — Cartoons show plants eating soil with roots like spoons, and carnivorous plants swallowing people; real plants make their own food from light, air and water, and no plant can eat a person. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/5/) — A seed takes in water, swells and splits; first a root grows down, then a shoot grows up, and this is called germination. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/6/) — A seed carries its own food store, so it can grow before it has leaves; roots grow down and shoots up whichever way the seed lies, because they sense gravity. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/7/) — Shoots bend towards light because cells on the shady side grow longer; plants grown in the dark become tall, pale and weak, stretching to look for light and staying pale because they cannot make green chlorophyll without it. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/9/) — Almost all the oxygen we breathe was made by plants and tiny algae in the sea. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/10/) — In the 1600s Jan van Helmont grew a willow in a pot for five years; it gained about 74 kg while the soil lost only a few grams. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/11/) — Water inside plant cells pushes outwards and keeps stems firm, like air in a balloon; without enough water the plant wilts. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/12/) — Soil gives plants water, grip for their roots and minerals such as nitrogen; without minerals plants grow small and yellow. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/13/) — Most seeds need warmth as well as water and air to germinate, and a date palm seed about 2000 years old was grown in Israel. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/14/) — Plants grow mainly at the tips of their shoots and roots, and some bamboos can grow nearly a metre in a day. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/15/) — A Venus flytrap shuts when an insect touches two trigger hairs within about 20 seconds; it lives in poor boggy soil and gets nitrogen from insects; even the biggest meat-eating plants catch only insects and, rarely, a frog or mouse. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/16/) — A potato is a swollen underground stem full of starch, and its sprouts are new shoots; green parts of potatoes can be poisonous. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/56-how-plants-grow/17/) — In a fair test you change only one thing and keep everything else the same. - ← previous: [Sleep and hibernation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/55-sleep-and-hibernation/) - next →: [Roots, stems and leaves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/57-roots-stems-and-leaves/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)