Answer 1:
The simple answer is yes, all plants
die. Plants are very different than we animals
are, though, and the answer to your question is
actually not as simple as that.
First, plants have what's known as
"indeterminate growth." That means
that,unlike animals, there's no set size or age
when a plant is considered mature or old. If
conditions are right, they can simply grow and
grow with almost no limitations. (The two
limitations they'd eventually experience would be
that they'd get so big that:
1. they could no longer support the weight of
their own bodies, and
2. water could no longer travel reach all the way
from their roots to their branches.)
If humans and other animals were like this,it
would be like you being 25 feet tall and still
growing as long as your parents kept feeding you!
The second big difference between plants and
animals is that most plant cells can change at
any time into another cell type, dividing
many, many times in the process. This is called
being "perpetually embryonic," and it's why
plants can keep growing indefinitely. It's also
why you can stick a leaf or green twig in a glass
of water and it will start growing roots.
Animals have very rare and special cells like
that called stem cells, but
most animal cells are stuck being what they are
(like skin cells or nerve cells),and they can't
really divide much anymore.
What all this means is that the reasons why
animals die (we stop growing,our cells stop
dividing and "wear out") don't affect plants.
Many kinds of trees commonly live for thousands of
years. Other plants send up new plants from
the end of their roots--those new
plants do the same thing, and this continues on
and on until you have a single plant that's many
miles across!It looks like many different plants
to us, but that's just because we can't see that
they're all connected underground. The first part
of the plant in the middle may eventually die, but
all its other parts keep living and living--I
don't know if anyone knows how old those plants
can get.
Just because of the laws of physics,
though, I think it's safe to say that even those
plants eventually die. Plus, you have to remember
that conditions in nature are never perfect for
very long. So, even though a plant has the
ability to possibly live forever, something will
eventually happen to kill it like drought,
fire, disease, or other plants using up all the
soil nutrients. Excellent question! Click Here to return to the search form.
|