wild oats sow themselves, using parts of their anatomy to move into crevices where they take root.

cocoa trees produce beans for about 25 years, but can live to be 200. it takes a cocoa tree about a year to produce enough cocoa beans to make 10 small chocolate bars.

technically, eggplants are berries.

sphagnum moss is a better medical dressing than cotton. it is naturally antiseptic and is twice as absorptive.

butterflies appeared on earth 70 million years before flowers.

in addition to color and scent, flowers attract bees using electrical fields that react with the tiny hairs on a bee's body. the electrical field varies from species to species.

85% of all plant life on earth lives in the ocean.

in arizona, it's illegal to cut down a cactus.

the flowers on a fig tree eat wasps.

sunflowers almost always face east.

henry ford and george washington carver were good friends. both shared an interest in eating weeds as salads and sandwich toppings, or sometimes plain with mustard.

we find 'new' species every single day. here's a recent headcount:

• plants - 321,212
• vertebrates - 62,305
• invertebrates - 1,305,250

the tallest living tree in the world is an 800-year-old redwood named 'hyperion' that stands more than 380 feet tall. scientists have kept its exact location a secret for fear that visitors would disturb its inhabitants.

a species of pitcher plant found in the mountains of the philippines is so large that it eats rats. the rats are lured by the pitcher plant's nectar, fall in, and are slowly digested.

aside from being good for your heart, there are 2 more reasons to like garlic: if you eat fresh garlic, mosquitos won't bite you, and neither will leeches. in fact, rubbing garlic or garlic oil on a leech will kill it.

dictamnus albus, also called the 'gas plant', is a bush that produces a lemony oil in summer that spontaneously combusts in hot weather, without burning the bush itself. it has been suggested that this is the 'burning bush' mentioned in the bible.

the ancient romans used a natural, plant-based contraceptive called silphium. the plant's seeds are where we get the 'heart' shape that we use on valentine's, etc. (didn't know that every heart you drew was a contraceptive ad, did you?)

so why don't we use silphium today? the romans used it all up, and it became extinct.

tumbleweeds are not native to the american west. they are an invasive species from asia, commonly called 'russian thistle'.