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🌳 Plants 🌱 Plants and their parts

Leaves

Leaves

πŸ“– In short

A leaf is a plant's food factory! Thanks to green leaves, plants make their own food from sunlight, water and air. Leaves come in lots of shapes: wide or thin, round or toothed, very big or very small.

🀩 Did you know?

  • The biggest leaves grow on the raffia palm, and can be 20 meters long.
  • Stomata make up less than 1% of a leaf's surface.
  • Cactus spines are leaves that changed shape to save water.
  • Leaves are sorted by their shape, their veins and how many parts they have.

πŸ”Ž Find out more

🌟 Making food

A leaf contains a green substance called chlorophyll that catches sunlight. The plant uses the light's energy to make sugar from the water its roots soak up and carbon dioxide from the air, and gives off the oxygen we breathe.

πŸ” Tiny holes

A leaf has tiny holes we can't see with our eyes, called stomata, which let air in and water vapor out, opening and closing as the plant needs.

πŸ’‘ Veins

Hold a leaf up to the light and you'll see lines called veins. They're tiny tubes that bring water to the leaf and carry food from it to the rest of the plant.

🎯 Why do they change color in autumn?

In autumn some trees stop making green chlorophyll, so other colors that were hidden appear, yellow, orange and red, and then the leaves fall.

πŸ“Έ More pictures

Leaves
Leaves
Leaves

🧩 Test yourself

1 What is the green substance in a leaf that catches light?

2 Which gas do leaves give off that we breathe?

3 The biggest leaves grow on the raffia palm, and can be ?? meters long.

4 Which picture shows β€œLeaves”?

🌳 Discover more

πŸ“· Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons