A genetically modified organism, or GMO, is any organism that has had its genetic code tampered with or altered by people with modern technology. GMO’s are useful for producing large quantities of food and other goods as they can be configured to provide higher crop yields, resist pesticides or have other favorable traits. The Doritos featured above are one such product that includes these modified crops.
List #53
Dispersing ones child seeds is always a challenge for a stationary plant. One way to overcome this is to develop adaptions to hijack animal’s freedom of movement as this Huckleberry bush has done. The Huckleberry grows berries around its seeds, which are just the right size for birds to snack on. The birds then fly to another location while digesting the berries and poop out the indigestible seeds at the new site. In this way the birds and the bushes have developed a symbiotic relationship where the bushes feed the birds and the birds spread the bushes.
List #2
Angiosperms (aka flowering plants) are a group of plants that produce carpel-enclosed seeds and have flowers. This group includes various shrubs, trees, mosses and grasses, and is very diverse with over 295,000 known species. Pictured above are the flowers of several different types of angiosperms in various sizes.
List #7
Cellulose is the most common organic compound on earth. It is a polysaccharide made of several chains of glucose monomers. Cellulose is what builds very strong plant cell walls and makes plant fibers and stems so strong. We can see this in the thin stem shown above that is holding up dozens of leaves.
List #23
Deciduous trees and plants shed their leaves annually, usually in autumn before winter. This falling action is a characteristic of the season, so much so we gave it another name- “Fall.” Pictured above is a fallen deciduous maple leaf that has begun the decomposition process.
List #32
Blackberry plants, like the one pictured above, are known for their painful and annoying thorns. These thorns are part of the stems of the blackberry bush, and are a modification of the stem for defense. Nobody wants to eat a plant with a mouthful of thorns, right?
A woody stem is a stem or trunk that is hard and firm compared to a herbaceous stem, which is soft and flexible. Woody stems tend to last much longer and prove to be more durable than herbacous stems, and generally do not regrow annually. The best example of a woody stem is a tree trunk, akin to the cedar trunk pictured above.
List #103
Pollen is to a plant as sperm is to a mammal. Pollen is made up of microscopic grains that each carry a male gamete and are capable of fertilizing a plant’s female ovule. It is usually a yellow or orangish powder and is produced and released from a flower’s male cone, and relies on the wind and contact with insects for transport. Above we can see several flowers containing yellow pollen towards their centers.
List #88
CAM stands for crassulacean acid metabolism. Essentially, it is a carbon-fixation version of photosynthesis certain plants have adapted to use in arid climates to conserve water. A CAM plant only takes in CO2 during nighttime (closes the stomata on its leaves in the daytime) to prevent the plant from losing water out of the stomata in the hotter dayttime (reduces evapotranspiration). The plant then stores the CO2 until the next day when its uses sunlight to photosynthesize like normal using the previous night’s CO2 supply. Above is a pineapple, which uses this process.
List #22
A Pollinator is a bug or animal that (willingly or not) moves pollen around a flower and between plants. This movement of pollen, or pollination, allows many plants to reproduce, flower, and bear fruit. Bees, like the one pictured in the flower above, are the best pollinators as they source their food from inside flowers and so spend a lot of time brushing up against them and pollen. Butterflies and hummingbirds also make great pollinators for the same reasons.
List #89
Patrick Ledoux's AP Biology Blog 