Smarty Plants

Plants have many ways to survive. One of the things they do is adapt, which means they grow in special ways, to spread their seed and match the feeding habits of the animal that pollinates them. This means that a flower's color, shape, and blooming pattern are clues about the plant's pollinator. For example, some flowers open only at night so moths (who only fly at night) can pollinate them. Other flowers are tube-shaped and surrounded by wide, flat petals or leaves so that butterflies can land on them, and use their long, straw-like mouths to suck nectar from deep within the flowers. Since butterflies like color, the flowers they pollinate use bright colors of the rainbow to attract them.

Plants also have developed fruit that is specially designed to move their seeds away from the parent plant in order to grow new plants in different areas. For example, coconuts are hollow and float, so waves and water can carry them to new places.