After Jonas refreshed his memory about plant characteristics that scientists use to classify organisms as plants, he still wanted to learn more.
When he returned to his hotel room, he came across a video, "Welcome to the Plant Sanctuary!" This video deals with adaptations. Adaptations are features that make organisms better suited for their environment. While watching the video, think of how a plant is adapted to live in a certain ecosystem (the interaction of all of the organisms in a geographical area and climate).
If all the plants in the world needed to live in one country, they would all find a suitable place to grow in Mexico. Thanks to its geographical location and diversity of its land, Mexico boasts of at least nine different ecosystems
An ecosystem is the interaction of all the organisms in one area along with the climate, type of soil and elevation.
From the high elevation of the cloud forests
the watery depths of the wetlands
and deserts in between, just about every plant in the world can be relocated to a Mexican ecosystem.
That's because within Kingdom Plantae, is a large variation of plants, which have adapted to different environments.
Even within one ecosystem, such as the tropical rainforest, there are different plant adaptations to ensure the life of the plant.
Plants adapted to live in the high moisture of the tropical rainforest would die if they were transplanted to the desert, where there's hardly any moisture.
In the desert Mexican plants receive hardly any water, but lots of sunshine.
They have adapted to those conditions by having very skinny, pointed leaves called spines.
A plant with broad, large leaves could not live in the desert, because it would quickly die from thirst since a plant can lose a lot of water through its leaves
A desert plant grows slowly in order to save water and depends more on its stem for photosynthesis. A 10 year old Saguaro cacti may be only 1.5 inches tall.
At the opposite extreme, Mexican plants living in a wetland ecosystem have their own adaptations. One of the Mexican wetland superstars are the mangroves.
Mangroves are trees that have adapted to life emerged in salty water.
The first thing most people notice when they enter a mangrove are the thick network of roots. Not only do these large roots help to support the trees the wet soil, but they do a superb job of filtering the salt out of the water; so the tree has a supply of fresh water.
So whatever needs a plant living in another country has, it can find a comfortable place within Mexico!
Question
Why can different plants from around the world find a place to grow and survive in Mexico?
