Life Cycle of Plants

Just like people, plants are born, grow up, and eventually have offspring who then go through the same stages. Let’s learn more about the stages in the life cycle of plants!

A cycle doesn’t have a start or an end, but we need to begin somewhere so let’s start with seeds!

Seed –A seed is what a plant creates to reproduce itself.  Each seed contains all the information to make a plant grow up to be like its parents.  You can think of a seed as being like an egg.  But unlike eggs, some seeds can wait a long, long time to sprout!

Seedling – If a seed senses that there is enough water in the soil and the temperature is warm enough, it will start to sprout.  That means it will start to develop a stem, leaves, and roots.  The first leaves of the plant usually form from parts of the seeds called cotyledons (flowering plants can have either 1 or 2).  A seedling is a young plant, just like a kid is a young person.

Mature Plant – Plants grown by thickening up their stems and producing more leaves to soak up the sunshine.  They also send roots deep into the ground to pull important minerals from the soil.  When they are strong enough, they start to produce flowers so they can reproduce with other mature plants.

Flowers and Back to Seeds – A flower from one plant will send pollen to the flower of another plant, using just the wind or maybe insect transport (like bees).  When a piece of pollen goes into another plant’s flower, that flower becomes fertilized, which means it will start to grow a seed or many seeds.  And when the seeds are ready, they fall to the ground and the cycle starts again!

If you are done with life cycle of plants, check out our interesting article about Sprouting Seeds!