Goethe and the Changing Plant
A flower petal and a green leaf may look very different. Could they be related parts of a plant? More than 200 years ago, a writer named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe studied plants and proposed an answer.
Goethe was born on August 28, 1749, in Frankfurt, in what is now Germany. He became famous for poems and plays, but he also spent many years studying nature. He collected specimens, examined plants, and wrote about what he observed. At his desk, he compared plant sketches with his written ideas, looking for connections among their different parts.
Goethe noticed that a plant changes as it grows. Early leaves can differ in shape from leaves that appear later on the same stem. Near the top of a flowering plant, still other structures appear: sepals, petals, stamens, and the parts that contain seeds. Sepals often protect a flower bud, while stamens make pollen. These parts have different jobs and may look unlike ordinary leaves.
- specimens:
- Examples collected for study.
- structures:
- Parts formed in a particular way within a living thing.
- variations:
- Forms that are different from one another in some ways.
- observations:
- Things noticed while watching or studying something.
- cells:
- Tiny units that make up living things.
- genes:
- Instructions in living things that help guide growth and traits.
- evolutionary:
- Related to changes in living things over many generations.
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Preview questions from this passageShowHide
- 1What question about plant parts did Goethe try to answer?
- 2How did Goethe's work at his desk help him study plants?
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About this explanatory article passage for Upper Elementary
“Goethe and the Changing Plant” is a explanatory article reading passage about Plant development, written for Upper Elementary. It takes about 3 minutes to read (465 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.