New Zealand plants are unique! New Zealand has some of the oldest primeval forests in the world, the largest type of moss and some of the largest tree ferns found anywhere. Many of the species ...
Explore this interactive diagram to learn more about the global carbon cycle.
Plants make seeds that can grow into new plants, but if the seeds just fall to the ground under the parent plant, they might not get enough sun, water or nutrients from the soil. Because plants ...
Our understanding of how inherited traits are passed between generations comes from principles first proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1866. Mendel worked on pea plants, but his principles apply to ...
Plant propagation is the process of increasing the number of plants of a particular species or cultivar. Propagation can be via sexual or asexual means. Over the years, horticulturalists have ...
Mendel is known as the father of genetics because of his ground-breaking work on inheritance in pea plants 150 years ago. Gregor Johann Mendel was a monk and teacher with interests in astronomy ...
Sexual reproduction is a way of making a new individual by joining two special sex cells, called gametes. In the sexual reproduction of animals and plants, the male and female gametes join to ...
Scientists divide plants into two main groups depending on whether they reproduce by seeds or spores. Plants that reproduce by seeds Seed plants have special structures on them where male and ...
The flowers and fruit of flowering plants come and go as part of their life cycle. Some flowering plants don’t even have stems and leaves all the time. The fruit and vegetables we eat come from ...
Not every plant grows from a seed. Some plants, like ferns and mosses, grow from spores. Other plants use asexual vegetative reproduction and grow new plants from rhizomes or tubers. We can also ...
The ecology of the river refers to the relationships that living organisms have with each other and with their environment – the ecosystem. An ecosystem is the sum of interactions between plants ...
The life cycle of ferns is different from other land plants as both the gametophyte and the sporophyte phases are free living. This interactive illustrates the alternation of generations in ...
Flowering plants need to get pollen from one flower to another, either within a plant for self-pollination or between plants of the same species for cross-pollination to occur. However, pollen ...
There are ferns in most New Zealanders’ backyards and local environments. Ferns are green flowerless plants with divided leaves that tend to grow in damp, shady areas. The developing leaves of ...
Scientists currently consider that New Zealand has approximately 230 species of fern in about 50 different genera. They are widely distributed throughout the country, including around 42 species ...
Plants are living: They grow and die. They produce new individuals. They are made of cells. They need energy, nutrients, air and water. They respond to their environment. Plants are different to ...
Rongoā is the traditional Māori healing system. Rongoā is a holistic practice that often includes using the medicinal properties of New Zealand native plants. Early Māori and rongoā Although ...
Trees are all plants and carry out the life processes that all plants share. However, trees are not actually a scientific group of their own. Trees may be cone-bearing plants (gymnosperms) ...
Humans have many reasons to grow plants. We use them for food, for building materials, for pleasure and for many other purposes. A plant really just has one reason to grow – to reproduce and make ...
Most ferns reproduce sexually. Dr Leon Perrie from Te Papa discusses the main elements of the reproductive life cycle of ferns. He refers to a diagram of the fern life cycle interactive to ...
What do you think of when asked to visualise a plant? Is it the feed crop growing in the paddock next door or a large kauri tree growing in a forest? Is it a tiny microscopic alga or the potted ...
All tea is made from the leaves of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis. Six main types of tea are produced – white, yellow, green, oolong, black and post-fermented. Each type of tea has a unique ...
Professor Kim Pickering from the School of Engineering at the University of Waikato was the winner of the 2008 KuDos Award for Environmental Science, sponsored by Environment Waikato. Kim’s ...
