Plants and Nature - Bizarre Facts

Bizarre Fact #1:
Did you know...
A person standing under an oak tree is 16 more times liable to be hit by lightning than if he had taken refuge beneath a beech tree. The oak tree has vertical roots which provide a more direct route to ground water.

Bizarre Fact #2:
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A plant in central Australia, the candlesticks of the sun, grows a candle-shaped flower once every 7 years.

Bizarre Fact #3:
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A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.

Bizarre Fact #4:
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American colonists discovered that superior candles could be made from the fruit of a squat bush growing in the sand dunes along the New England seashore. The small, grayish bayberry was picked, crushed, and boiled. It had to be skimmed several times before the pale, nearly transparent, green fat was sufficiently refined. Bayberry candles were highly prized, because so much labor and so many berries were needed to make just one candle.

Bizarre Fact #5:
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An ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows. A pound of corn consists of approximately 1,300 kernels. 100 bushels of corn produces approximately 7,280,000 kernels. Corn is produced on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica.

Bizarre Fact #6:
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At last count there were about 226,000 trees in New York's Central Park.

Bizarre Fact #7:
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Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.

Bizarre Fact #8:
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Carrageenan is a common ingredient in ice cream and toothpaste. Carrageenan is seaweed. A purple, edible seaweed, also known as Irish moss, that's found along the coasts of Northern Europe and North America. It's used as a suspending agent in foods, pharmaceuticals and liquids, as a clarifying agent for beverages, and in controlling crystal growth in frozen confections.

Bizarre Fact #9:
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Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which means the poppy that brings sleep.

Bizarre Fact #10:
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In ancient religions, the Norsemen considered the mistletoe a baleful plant that caused the death of Baldur, the shining god of youth.

Bizarre Fact #11:
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Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.

Bizarre Fact #12:
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Leaves of the Sumatra breadfruit tree are notched when they first form, yet have no indentations when the leaves mature.

Bizarre Fact #13:
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Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.

Bizarre Fact #14:
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Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.

Bizarre Fact #15:
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Of the 15,000-odd known species of orchids in the world, 3,000 of them can be found in Brazil.

Bizarre Fact #16:
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Orchids are grown from seed so small that it would take thirty thousand to weigh as much as one grain of wheat.

Bizarre Fact #17:
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Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbecuing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.

Bizarre Fact #18:
Did you know...
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.

Bizarre Fact #19:
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The bark of a redwood tree is fireproof. Fires that occur in a redwood forest take place inside the trees.

Bizarre Fact #20:
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The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.

Bizarre Fact #21:
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The fragrance of flowers is due to the essences of oil which they produce.

Bizarre Fact #22:
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The giant puffball, lycoperdon giganteum, produces 7,000,000,000,000 spores, each of which could grow into a puffball a foot in diameter and collectively cover an area of 280,000 square mile, greater than the size of Texas. Fortunately, only one of the spores actually becomes a puffball, and all the others die.

Bizarre Fact #23:
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The giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.

Bizarre Fact #24:
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The leaves of the Victorian water lily are sometimes over six feet in diameter.

Bizarre Fact #25:
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The Mexican Jumping Bean is not a bean. It is actually a thin-shelled section of a seed capsule containing the larva of a small gray moth called the jumping bean moth (Laspeyresia saltitans).

Bizarre Fact #26:
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The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.

Bizarre Fact #27:
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The primary purpose of growing rice in flooded paddies is to drown the weeds surrounding the young seedlings. Rice can, in fact, be grown in drained areas.

Bizarre Fact #28:
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The Saguaro Cactus, found in the Southwestern United States doesn't grow branches until it is 75 years old.

Bizarre Fact #29:
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The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

Bizarre Fact #30:
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The Siberian larch accounts for more than 20% of all the worlds trees.

Bizarre Fact #31:
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The Sitka spruce is Britain's most commonly planted tree.

Bizarre Fact #32:
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The slippers plant (bulbo stylis) of Haiti looks like a pair of fuzzy slippers.

Bizarre Fact #33:
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The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.

Bizarre Fact #34:
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The telegraph plant of Asia has leaves that flutter constantly, even when there is no breeze.

Bizarre Fact #35:
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The tree dictated on the Lebanese flag is a Cedar.

Bizarre Fact #36:
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The woman's tongue of Zanzibar is a plant with pods full of seeds which rattle continuously.

Bizarre Fact #37:
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There are an estimated 285,000 species of flowering plants on Earth compared to 148,000 for all other plants. Flowering plants are very important because they provide food for herbivores - plant-eating animals - and for humans.

Bizarre Fact #38:
Did you know...
Trees do not have life expectancies like humans. Some in California are believed to be four-thousand years old or more. How can trees live so long? The simple answer is that they're not as complex as people. So, as long as conditions are right, trees continue to live and grow, until something interrupts it.

Bizarre Fact #39:
Did you know...
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonard da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk revealed its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture.