Lesson video

Hello there.

My name is Mr. Wilshire.

In this lesson, we're going to be comparing what plants need in different habitats.

The outcome for this lesson is, I can compare how the requirements of plants can vary from plant to plant.

The key words for this lesson are requirements.

Then habitat.

After that, vary.

Finally, conditions.

Don't worry if you're not too sure what some of these words mean, they should pop up as we work our way through the lesson.

You can keep an eye out for them, as they'll be in bold.

If you're not too sure what they mean, pause the video here and read the definitions.

Restart when you've done that.

The first part of this lesson is called Plant requirements.

Jun has been thinking about what living things need to survive.

Here you can see an example of some living things.

There's a plant, and it looks like there's a little mouse there too.

Jun says, "Animals need food, water, and air to survive.

Do plants need the same things?" What do you think? Do plants need the same things to stay alive? Hmm.

Have a discussion, and restart the video when you've done that.

So what did you think? Do animals and plants need the same things to survive? Well, all plants have the same basic requirements to survive and grow.

They all need air.

They all need light.

They definitely need water.

They need warmth.

They also need room to grow.

They need to get nutrients from the soil too.

All of these things are vital to a plant growing and surviving.

So which of these are requirements for plants to grow and survive? Do they need room to grow? Do they need water or light? compost? Nutrients from soil.

Air, warmth, or darkness? Which of those did you choose? All of these things here, A, B, C, E, F, and G are all things that a plant needs to grow and survive.

They don't exactly need compost because they can get nutrients out of any soil, and darkness isn't going to help the plant to grow at all.

They need sunlight.

Plants can move from place to place, just like animals can.

So a good habitat for a plant needs to include all of their requirements.

Plants can move from place to place? Do they pick up their roots and just wander around? Not really.

They don't exactly get out of their pot and wander around, but they do move in order to keep the sunlight shining on their leaves, so their leaves, you'll find, will follow the sun across the day.

It's rather fascinating to watch.

Now, a plant wouldn't be able to survive if they didn't have one or more of their requirements met.

It would be very, very difficult for it to stay alive for as long.

Let's stop and think.

A good habitat for a plant has lots and lots of different types of plants, has all of the plants requirements, is regularly watered by humans.

The correct answer here is B.

A good habitat for a plant has all of the plants' requirements.

Andeep says, "Don't plants need food like humans and other animals do?" Izzy says, "Well, I think they do.

I've seen my dad giving plant food to the plants in our garden." Here you can see an example of some plant food.

I don't think that looks very good for humans to eat, though.

What do you think? So what did you think? Is Izzy correct? Not really, no.

You see, plants don't need to eat food, they don't have mouths, but they do use their roots to suck up nutrients from the soil.

You can use some special plant food, but that isn't like animals.

Animals usually have got a stomach that they use to process food.

Plants don't have stomachs in this way, but they do process nutrients that they get from the soil through the stem, growing into the leaves to help them grow flowers, and fruit, and other things.

Plants can make their own food as well.

They use light, water, and carbon dioxide from the air.

They don't need to find and eat food like animals do.

Just like I said before, they don't have mouths or stomachs to fill, but they do need to use that food to help them to grow.

Let's stop and think.

Plants will die if humans don't give them plant food to eat.

That answer is false, but why? Why is that false? Well, plants can make their own food in their leaves.

They use the sunlight in order to do this.

So here is Task A.

Sort these requirements into the Venn diagram.

Venn diagram is two hoops, on one side, it's written animals, and the other side, is written plants.

Anything that needs to go in the middle there in that middle hoop, would fit both of these.

So the requirements you've got are nutrients from the soil, air, water, food to eat, and light.

Sort those requirements into the Venn diagram and see what you end up with.

Best of luck with your task.

Restart the video when you've done that.

How did you get on? Were you able to sort these requirements? Well, here, hopefully, you can see the differences between animals and plants.

Animals on the left there, they need food to eat.

They don't just make their own food themselves.

Plants, they gather nutrients from the soil, and they also gather light.

Those things aren't specific to animals growing.

Plants are the things that need these.

Air and water in the middle there because both plants and animals need these things to grow and to survive.

I wonder if there are any other requirements that you might like to add into this Venn diagram.

You could think about the type of nutrients that plants will get, or maybe even the type of food that animals will get.

Can you sort these into any of the other circles there, and would they fit? The final part of this lesson is called Plants in different habitats.

Lucas is looking at some care instructions for some house plants.

He says, "Why do these instructions say that the plants need different things to each other? Don't all plants have the same requirements?" Hmm, let's have a look.

So the top picture there is that that plant says that it grows best between 15 and 25 degrees.

It's easy care and it needs a little amount of water.

Here, the top right one there, it says that that plant grows best between 15 and 35 degrees.

So that's 10 degrees warmer, isn't it? It can grow in direct sunlight, it looks like.

Those symbols there show that the plant will grow better in the shade or in the direct sunlight.

The top left one grows better in the shade.

The top right one can grow in either.

It looks very easy to plant and grow that top right one, doesn't it? The final plant instructions at the bottom there, that grows between 10 and 35 degrees.

So when it's a bit chillier as well, that probably means that you can put that plant outside during the springtime when it's still a little bit cold.

And again, this plant needs a small amount of water, and it can also grow in the shade.

What do you think here? Do all plants have the same requirements, then? Use this evidence to help.

So how did you get on? Do all plants need the same requirements? Well, as you saw there, not really.

All plants have got the same basic needs for survival.

A little bit similar to humans and animals.

We definitely need water.

We need a little bit of food, don't we? If we don't have those basic things, we're going to die.

Plants have got the same basic needs, but their specific requirements will vary from plant to plant.

For example, some plants, like corn, need lots and lots of water to stay alive and to grow well.

There, you can see an example of some corn there.

It's growing, and, well, it looks like it's gonna be very ready soon to eat some sweet corn.

Now, other plants, like cacti, need very little water, and it can grow in very inhospitable environments like the desert.

So if you were to put too much water onto a cactus, I wonder what would happen.

And if you didn't put too much water onto corn, I wonder, well, does that mean that it would die? Some plants also need a lot more room to grow than others.

Again, this is very specific to plants.

Humans don't essentially need room to grow.

I wonder if you can use the seed packets here to see which plant needs more space and which plant needs less space.

Have a read of those instructions for rocket lettuce seeds and cauliflower seeds and decide.

Restart the video when you've done that.

Let's have a look.

The image on the left shows plants that need 25 centimetres of space, and the cauliflower seeds on the right need 60 centimetres of space.

Lucas says, "I can see that these cauliflower seeds need much more space to grow than the rocket seeds." And Sam says, "I can see that they need different types of soil too." Ah, yes, there's some extra information at the bottom.

It's really important that you read all the parts of the instructions.

So the rocket lettuce seeds need 25 centimetres of space between them.

They need fertile, moisture, retentive soil, so it needs to be a little bit damp for them to grow.

The cauliflower seeds, on the other hand, they need 60 centimetres of space.

That's more than double the space, isn't it? They need well-cultivated and fertile soil.

So they obviously don't like things being too damp.

Different plants also have different requirements for warmth.

You may have seen this on the temperature gauge on those plant labels that you saw before.

Some, like mangoes, grow best in very, very warm conditions.

You can see some fruit hanging from a mango tree there.

Some plants, like Arctic poppies, can survive in really, really cold places.

Have you ever seen any of these plants growing before? Have you seen some mangoes growing on a mango tree somewhere? Or have you been lucky enough to go to the Arctic and see some Arctic poppies growing? They don't look like the poppies that we get in the United Kingdom.

Here, we usually get red poppies, but these are very yellow.

I wonder if that's anything to do with the amount of light that they get.

Stop and think, is this true or false? Plants all have exactly the same requirements to survive and grow.

The answer here is false.

Why? Can we justify our answer here? Well, plants all have the same basic requirements, but the specific amount of things, such as light, water, and space, and types of soil they need varies from plant to plant.

Now, because plants can't move from place to place like animals can, they must get all their requirements from the habitat that they're growing in.

Different habitats provide different conditions that plants need to survive.

Here, you can see some examples of different habitats, from a very, very crowded jungle there to a very barren desert.

Also, you can see a bit of a marshland there at the bottom of a mountain.

Let's stop and think.

Which of these statements is correct? Read each of those statements there and decide how does it answer the question.

The correct answer here is B.

Different habitats provide different conditions for plants.

Now, yucca plants grow very well in hot, dry desert habitats.

So I wonder, what requirements do you think yucca plants may have? Yucca plants need lots of sunlight, warm temperatures, and they don't need a lot of water to survive.

Here, you can see lots of them growing in the desert.

They wouldn't survive well in habitats that don't have these conditions, like the Arctic or a rainforest.

You wouldn't get any of these plants there at all.

The rainforest is far too crowded for a start.

Stop and think.

Plants which grow in the desert would not survive in the Arctic because it's too cold, it's too dry, or there are too many predators.

The correct answer here is that the climate is too cold.

Now water lilies grow in ponds, swamps, and marshes in warm and hot habitats.

So what requirements do you think water lilies may have? A pond is a big body of water or a small body of water.

A swamp can be filled with lots and lots of sucky mud that will suck things down into it.

Marshes are made up of lots and lots of water, very low-level water that grasses can grow across as well.

So what requirements do you think water lilies may have? Well, water lilies require a warm or a hot temperature.

They need lots of sunlight and lots of water.

They wouldn't be able to survive in habitats that don't have these conditions, like a dry desert or beneath the shade of a large tree.

Stop and think.

Plants which grow in wet places such as marshes and bogs would not survive in the desert because there's not enough light, not enough air, or not enough water.

The correct answer here is that there is not enough water.

Here is Task B.

Imagine that you're a plant that has been planted in the wrong habitat.

You can't just pick up your roots and go walking off, can you? You could be a yucca in the Arctic, a water lily in the desert, or another plant in a habitat that doesn't have all of its requirements.

You need to write a letter of complaint explaining what your needs are, how the habitat you are in doesn't meet these requirements, and where you would like to be moved to instead.

Have some fun with this and add a bit of character to your plant.

Best of luck.

Restart the video when you've done that.

So were you able to imagine that you were a plant that's been planted in the wrong place? Lucas wonders if your letter is similar to his.

"To whom it may concern." A very official start.

"I'm writing to you because I think I've been placed into the most unsuitable of habitats.

As a water lily, I need a lot of water as well as a lot of sunlight.

Here in the desert, I'm getting the sunshine that I need, but I am not getting nearly enough water.

It's also very, very hot.

Please, could I be moved to a lovely, large pond straight away so I can get the water I need? Yours sincerely, Walter the Lily." Well, hopefully you've added some character to your type of plant as well.

I wonder what you wrote about and the type of habitat that you found.

Let's summarise our lesson.

A good habitat for a plant provides a combination of air, light, water, nutrients from the soil, and room to grow.

The requirements of plants for life and growth vary from plant to plant.

Plants may not grow well or survive outside of their usual habitats because their specific requirements will not be met.

Hopefully, you've got some extra information to help you go ahead and plant some plants in the future.

Remember, plants need some very specific things to help them to survive.

They don't all just survive outside in the soil.

Good luck planting your own gardens of the future.

I've been Mr. Wilshire.

Thank you very much for listening.