different plants are categorized in many ways. One specific method classifies plants depending on how they are used. These uses include food, medicine, industry, or simple decoration.
Category number one is plant you can eat. These are plants that are cultivated by agriculturalists from farm crops, both commercial and privatized. These edible types of plants are the majority of what farms turn out.
Most of the edible plants we are discussing are vegetables or fruits, but there are also many others that qualify as plants that can be eaten.
Some of these are herbs, seasonings, nuts, and legumes. Nuts are nothing more than dried and hardened fruit seeds. Herbs, whether fresh or dehydrated, are just flavorful plant life.
Seasonings are simply different fruits or scraps of bark that have been dehydrated for market. Some beverages, like coffee and teas, are also procured from edible plants.
Plants used for medicine is our second category. This category includes all plants that have medicinal benefits, many of which are cultivated specifically for use in prescription drugs. Medicinal plants only count in this category if they do not need to be modified chemically.
Opium is one such plant, and it is used in several pain relief drugs. Codeine and morphine are two good examples. Opiate drugs are manufactured with poppy sap after it has been refined and dehydrated.
Some types of plants that are medically beneficial do not require any processing whatsoever. For example, witch hazel is a wonderfully effective anti-itching agent when massaged into the skin.
It can be a great help for those with chronic dry skin or anyone suffering from insect bites. The yarrow plant will help the body ward off poisoning. Many plants are used as antibiotics, including garlic, which can help cure infections. Peppermint and dandelion are often employed to aid problematic digestion.
Other plants that have medicinal properties are eaten or used raw. Witch hazel can be rubbed on the skin and is helpful with itching that accompanies bug bites and skin dryness.
Yarrow is a type of plant eaten to relieve poisoning. Garlic is an antibiotic and can stop infection, while dandelion and peppermint are used to treat digestive problems.
Plants used in industry are very common, as well, and as such are our third category. Some plants produce usable oil, such as the oil palm. Other plants produce fibers that can be used for clothing and other materials, such as hemp and flax.
Our last type of plants category is the decorative plant category. If you live in or travel to the suburbs regularly, you will see that it is very fashionable!
Many suburban homes will have extravagant, multi-colored gardens displaying many types of plants from this category, as they have no use besides their aesthetic appeal. Ivies, poinsettias, tulips, a number of trees, and many types of shrubbery all fit into the decorative definition.
When discussing plants, a helpful way to sort them into categories is by taking a look at the way different plants adapt to different environments.This means examining whether a given type of plant can endure severe climatic conditions, different soils, and varying amounts of available water. There are 3 categories to organize plants based on their ability to adapt to environments: temperature, water needs, and soil needs.
When classifying in terms of temperature, a given plant will fit into one of 4 subcategories. Certain types plants are very resilient and can withstand major temperature changes. Some aren?t even affected by them at all!
Most of these plants originate in areas where the weather normally gets very cold, often near certain evergreen trees.
Tender is the second temperature subcategory. Tender implies that plants in this category will do very well if temperatures or high and humid, but will probably not survive colder temperatures.
Annual and biennial plants are included in this subcategory. These plants are most common in western countries, and make up the bulk of vegetation in Europe and North America.
Many plants are grown as food, and those also fall into the temperature category. They are split into smaller categories, one for crops grown in the warm season, and one for crops grown in the cool season.
Warm seasons crops include citrus, beans, and corn. Cold season crops consist of plants like broccoli, peas, and lettuce.
The second type of plant category for environmental adapting is water requirement. This category is divided into three subcategories of plants.
The first subcategory is for plants that actually live within a body of water. The second is for plants that need minimal watering, like plants that live in desert climates. The third falls in between the first two categories, needing an average amount of water.
Lastly, the third category organizes plants based on the type of soil they need to survive. This category can also be broken into three subcategories. The first is called halophytes, and includes plants that do best in heavily salted soil.
The second is call acidophytes, including plants that do best in soils that are very acidic. The last subcategory is metallophytes, which includes plants that require soil with lots of metals present.
In conclusion, it is quite helpful to classify types of plants based on their environmental needs and ability to adapt.
There are several methods of categorizing types of plants, but there are 5 specific categories of plants used in North America. The categories include woody plants, grasses, sedges and rushes, forbs, and primitive species.The woody plants category is made up of trees, bushes, and shrubbery. To be included in this category, a plant must grow its stem over the earth and it must stay there even through cold seasons. Plants in the woody category tend to be very durable and resilient, and comprise the bulk of wooded environments.
The second category is grasses. Actual grasses are all members of the Poaceae family. Their leaves are slender and lengthy, their flowers are rarely visible, and their stems are hollow. Included in this category are foxtail grasses like the boreal and shortawn, and the prairie and barley varieties of Junegrass.
Sedges and rushes make up the third category, though it is often confused with the grasses category. Sedges and rushes look very similar to true grasses. Sedges and rushes have round or triangle-shaped stems, leaves that are either linear or pointed, and as flowers they have spikelets.
The fourth category of types of plants is forbs. Forbs are typically recognizable by their unusually wide leaves. These plants produce flowers and have non-wooded stems. A forb will ordinarily live only a year or two.
The final category of plants, primitive species, gives itself away. Primitive species of plants are not very intricate in terms of plants. Some North American primitive species of plants are ferns, algae, horsetails, and quillworks. Mosses, like club and spike moss for example, are also a part of the primitive species category. Often times these simplistic plants are not considered actual plants ? after all, who would think moss to be the equivalent of an oak tree? However, the primitive species are an essential element of the natural ecology of wooded areas. They offer necessary sustenance to animals and other vegetation that lives in the same environment.
To summarize, types of plants in North America fall into five different categories: woody plants, grasses, sedges and rushes, forbs, and primitive species. Almost all forests and woodlands in North American will house several examples of each category.
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