Every living thing needs food for energy and growth. Nutrition is how an organism takes in and uses that food. This chapter is about how plants — and a few unusual ones — get theirs.
Two ways living things get food
- ✓ Autotrophs make their own food. Green plants are autotrophs.
- ✓ Heterotrophs depend on others for food. Animals — and some plants — are heterotrophs.
Photosynthesis: the plant's kitchen
Green leaves are tiny food factories. Using sunlight, water from the roots, and carbon dioxide from the air, leaves make a sugar called glucose and release oxygen. The green colour comes from chlorophyll, which captures the sunlight. This process is called photosynthesis:
Carbon dioxide + Water — (sunlight + chlorophyll) → Glucose + Oxygen
Plants that get food in other ways
- ✓ Parasites take food from another living plant. Example: Cuscuta (amarbel).
- ✓ Insectivorous plants trap and digest insects for nitrogen. Example: the pitcher plant.
- ✓ Saprotrophs feed on dead and decaying matter. Example: fungi like mushrooms.
- ✓ Symbiosis is when two organisms live together and help each other — like lichens (algae + fungus).
Key terms to remember
Nutrition, autotroph, heterotroph, photosynthesis, chlorophyll, stomata (tiny pores on leaves for gas exchange), parasite, host, saprotroph, symbiosis. Soil also matters: farmers add manure and fertilisers to replace nutrients, especially nitrogen, that crops use up.
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