8 mind-boggling facts about your favourite flowers and plants
We’ve found some fun, quirky and downright mind-boggling facts about our favourite flowers and plants.
1. A sunflower is not just one flower. Each head is composed of hundreds of tiny flowers, called florets, held together on a single seed. This is the case for all plants in the sunflower family, including daises.
2. Apples, pears, peaches, cherries, raspberries, strawberries and more are actually in the rose family, making them cousins to the long-stemmed flower of love.
3. During the 1600s, tulips were so valuable in Holland that their bulbs were worth more than gold. No wonder the Netherlands is known for their tulips!
4. Bamboo is the fasted-growing woody plant in the world. The current Guinness World Record title is held by a certain species of the 45 genera of bamboo, which have been found to grow at up to 91 cm per day or at a rate of 0.00003 km/h.
5. Strawberries are the only fruit that bears its seeds on the outside. It has on average 200 seeds.
6. The oldest known flower was discovered in 2002, in northeast China. The flower, named archaefructus sinensis, bloomed around 125 million years ago and resembles a water lily.
7. The titan arum is the world’s largest flower. The circumference of the flower can be over three metres and a single leaf can grow to the size of a small tree. However, it smells horribly like rotten flesh, earning its nickname of corpse flower.
8. You can change the colour of your hydrangeas by altering the pH level of the soil. Alkaline soil will create pinker blooms, while a more acidic soil will produce blue blooms.
Image credit: Instagram
Related links:
What you need to know about your soil’s pH levels
Take a look inside the beautiful gardens of the Over60 community
Top tips for attracting birds to the garden