Spring Flowers!

              You know it's spring when all the flowers bloom and trees turn green. Most of my favorite flowers hide in the winter, fall, and summer but pop up in the spring. Why is that? Why don't the flowers come sooner or leave later? That's what I am exploring today.

               For a plant to thrive it needs oxygen, water, light, warmth, and dirt. A plant needs water to live and not dry up, and dirt to grow it's roots and be grounded. But why light and warmth? A plant needs light to photosynthesis. Photosynthesizing is the act of a plant getting light energy and transforming it into food (Long). It sounds kind of crazy right? Transferring light to food, how do they even get the light? Well, plants absorb light into their leaves and take that light energy and change the water and carbon dioxide they already contain into glucose. They then use this glucose (a type of sugar) to repair themselves and become stronger (PBS). This is also the reason why leaves are normally green. Chlorophyll, a chemical in the plant that traps the light, is what makes plants green. Surprisingly sunlight has many different colors in it and the plant can't absorb all of them. So, the plant absorbs the red and blue light from the sun and it then reflects as the color green (PBS). You may ask, what about the fall leaves? Leaves in the fall are a range of different colors as we all have seen they can be orange, yellow, green, red, brown, etc. This is because some plants stop producing chlorophyll in the fall because there is no more light energy to trap, so the plant no longer reflects green (PBS). That already explains why plants don't bloom in fall, there is a lack of sunlight and a lack of water. The lack of water is what causes the leaves to dry up and be shed from the trees (Indianapolis children's Museum).

Leaves during Fall

            We all know that winter isn't all too sunny. This is the exact reason plants hide during wintertime. There is no light to absorb and the light in the days become much shorter. Plants live off of the food they stored in the past spring and wait the winter out (Naik).
During summer some plants thrive and some don't. This is because of the heat. Plants need warmth but to much can cause them to wilt, some plants handle it better than others and live through the summer as well as the Spring. There is also less water which also plays a role in the wilting of flowers.

            This brings us to Spring, during Spring it is just warm enough, light outside, and just the perfect amount of water (Topmarks). Plants are really picky about their living conditions and that's why Spring is the popular time to bloom. Of course there are exceptions, some plants handle different weather better than others. That's because the plants have evolved to that certain type of weather. Thanks to evolution everyone gets their pretty flowers and trees.
            An example of a Spring flower is the arrow leaf balsam root.

Arrow-leaf Balsam Root

Roses

Dahlias

Lily

(Photos taken by me)

Works Cited:

“Blog.” Why Do Leaves Fall Off Trees? | The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Children's Museum, www.childrensmuseum.org/blog/why-do-leaves-fall-off-trees.

Long, Nicole. “The Importance of Light to a Plant.” Garden Guides, GardenGuides.com, 19 Nov. 2019, www.gardenguides.com/13404873-the-importance-of-light-to-a-plant.html.

Naik, Kavita. “Why Do Plants Need Water, Sunlight, Warmth & Soil to Grow?” Sciencing, Sciencing.com, 31 July 2019, sciencing.com/do-sunlight-warmth-soil-grow-5933400.html.

“Photosynthesis - NatureWorks.” New Hampshire PBS, PBS, nhpbs.org/natureworks/nwepphotosynthesis.htm.

“Why Do Plants Begin to Grow in Spring?” Topmarks, Topmarks.co.uk, www.topmarks.co.uk/Spring/PlantsGrowInSpring.aspx?age=ks2.