Noun

plants

1. Plural form of plant.

Verb

plants

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of plant.

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The scientific study of plants, known as botany, has identified about 350,000 extant species of plants, defined as seed plants, bryophytes, ferns and fern allies. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are flowering and 18,000 bryophytes (see table below). Green plants, sometimes called Viridiplantae, obtain most of their energy from sunlight via a process called photosynthesis.

Quotes about plants

• "The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life." ~ Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted (1933)

• "I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree." ~ Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems (1914)

• "There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords." ~ John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)

• "To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." ~ William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1803)

• "Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven." ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

• "Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?" ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

• "A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart." ~ Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons (1964)