Plant life cycles and reproduction · Grade 6

A flowering plant’s life goes round in a cycle. A seed germinates and grows into a plant. The plant flowers, its flowers are pollinated, and fertilisation makes new seeds. The seeds are spread away from the parent plant, and the cycle starts again.

Key facts

• The life cycle: seed → germination → seedling → adult plant → flowering → pollination → fertilisation → seeds → seed dispersal.
• A seed needs water, warmth and oxygen to germinate (start to grow). Most seeds don’t need light: they use food stored in the seed until their first leaves can make food.
• Parts of a flower: petals attract insects; sepals protect the bud; the stamen (anther and filament) makes pollen; the carpel (stigma, style and ovary) holds the ovules.
• Pollination: pollen moves from an anther to a stigma, carried by insects or the wind. Fertilisation: the nucleus of a pollen grain joins the nucleus of an ovule.
• After fertilisation the ovules become seeds and the ovary becomes the fruit.
• Seeds are dispersed (spread) by the wind, by animals, by water or by bursting out of pods, so the new plants don’t compete with the parent for light, water, nutrients and space.
• Insect-pollinated flowers have bright petals, scent and nectar. Wind-pollinated flowers are small and dull, with anthers and stigmas hanging outside and lots of light pollen.

Worked examples

Other years

• Plant life cycles and reproduction · Grade 3
• Plant life cycles and reproduction · Grade 4
• Plant life cycles and reproduction · Grade 5
• Plant life cycles and reproduction · Grade 7