Plant Products

The most important role that plants play in our lives is food, but that is not the only role plants play! Our clothing often contains fibres from plants, such as cotton. When twisted, pliable plant fibres make strong rope and twine. Forests provide us with wood, plywood, and paper. Plant oils from seeds are used to produce many products from cosmetics to soap and paint.

Plant Product: Cotton
Cotton is one of the most useful plants on Earth. There are fine hairs inside the fluff-filled pods that grow on cotton plants. This is the way the plant releases its seeds into the wind, but when they are spun together, the strong fibres make a thread that can be woven or dyed to produce all kinds of cloth. Sweatshirts, T-shirts or jeans all contain cotton.

Plant Product: Latex
Did you know that tires come from trees? Tires are made from rubber, and rubber is made from a substance called latex that comes from trees. Latex is a milk white liquid that oozes from the tree when it is injured. Latex is not a sap as some people believe. Scientists think it is how the tree protects itself after it has been damaged.

Another sort of latex from a tropical tree is chicle. Chicle is collected during the rainy season from trees in Mexico. It is boiled and shaped into bricks. The bricks are ground up, melted, shaped and flavoured to make chewing gum!

Plant Product: Paper
Did you know the first writing material was papyrus? Papyrus comes from a tall plant that grows along the Nile River in Egypt. Early Egyptians split the stems of the plant into long strips and laid them across each other. They pounded the plant strips until the sticky juices inside held them together. These sheets were then pasted into roles.

Much later, the Chinese discovered that bark fibres from mulberry trees could be made into thin sheets. Later they used linen and cotton rags beaten to a pulp, to make paper pages. Very fine paper is still made from these materials. About 150 years ago, the Germans discovered how to grind wood into pulp to make paper similar to the paper we use today.

Look Around You:
From plants we get rubber, cotton, linen, sugar, syrup, paper and string! Plants give us medicine, and just as importantly, plants give us pleasure! What a dull world it would be without green grass, shady trees, or lovely flowers.

Take a look around your school and classroom. How many things can you name that are made from plants?

Thinking about: Plant Products

Look for the bolded and underlined words in “Plant Products”.
Circle the right meaning for each bolded and underlined word.