Anchor - An anchor keeps something in place. Roots are anchors for plants. Roots help to hold plants in soil.

Annual - An annual plant lives or grows for one season or year only. (See also biennial and perennial.)

Antennae - The part of an insect that helps it sense what is nearby. Some insects have antennae that help them touch or smells things. Sometimes antennae are called feelers. Antennae are usually found on an insect's head. Antennae are flexible. That means an insect can move its antennae around. Antenna means one feeler-like part of an insect. Antennae means more than one feeler-like part.

Barley - Barley is a grain crop used as food for people and animals.

Beetle - A beetle is an insect that has biting mouthparts and special hardened forewings (elytra) that protect the insect's hind wings when the insect is resting.

Biennial - A biennial plant has a life cycle that normally takes two years to complete. (See also annual and perennial.)

Bracts - Bracts are modified leaves. Bracts are often mistaken for flowers. See the photo of a bougainvillea, above.

Canola - Canola is a plant grown for its oil. The canola plant produces yellow flowers. Those yellow flowers produce pods. Inside the pods are tiny round seeds that are crushed to get canola oil. Each seed is almost half oil. The rest of the seed is processed into canola meal, which is used as a high protein feed for livestock.

Celsius - Please see Centigrade.

Centigrade - Centigrade (Celsius) is a scale used to measure temperature. Fahrenheit is another scale to measure temperature. Some places, like Canada, use a Centigrade scale, while other places, such as the United States, usually measure temperature using a Fahrenheit scale. Swedish astronomer, Anders Celsius, invented the centigrade (Celsius) scale. Using the centigrade scale, the boiling point of water is 100° C, and the freezing point of water is 0° C. A German physicist, Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, invented the Fahrenheit scale. Using the Fahrenheit scale, water boils at 212° F, and it freezes at 32° F. If the temperature is °C, then it is 59° F. There is a formula for changing temperatures back and forth between Celsius and Fahrenheit:

Deciduous - Deciduous plants shed their leaves at the end of a growing season. Then at the beginning of the next growing season, buds appear and then leaves grow once again. (See also evergreen.)

Dormant - When a plant is dormant, its growth and development is slowed. In autumn, many trees and other plants lose their leaves and slow their growth. Dormant plants are still alive. It is important for them to slow their growth because they are getting less light and warmth from the sun. Becoming dormant for the cold winter months helps the plants survive until warm weather comes once again. This dormancy or being dormant is an important part of the growing cycle for many plants. It helps them to survive.

Drought - A drought is a long period of time without rain. Plants need water to grow, so a drought is very bad for plants. Seeds won't sprout without water, and plants usually die if they don't have water for a long time.

Durum - Durum is a hardy type of wheat. Durum wheat is used mainly in making pasta.

Elytra - Elytra are hardened front wing cases that protect the more fragile back wings on a beetle. Ladybugs' elytra are usually red with black spots. The wings under the elytra are what the insect uses for flying. Elytra means two or more hardened wing cases. Elytron means one hardened wing case.

Evergreen - An evergreen is a plant that has foliage (leaves) that stay green all year long. The leaves do not fall off and cause the plant's branches to be bare during the winter. (See also deciduous.)

Excrete - When plants or animals excrete something from themselves, that thing goes out of the plant or animal.

Fahrenheit - Please see Centigrade.

Forewings - Front wings

Compost - Compost is a mixture of organic matter that is decaying. The organic matter may be leaves, grass clippings, plant cuttings, kitchen scraps (fruit and vegetable peelings, for example), or manure. Compost may contain a mixture of any of those things. There are other types of organic matter that may be used in compost. Compost improves the structure of soil and adds nutrients to the soil so that plants grow better.

Grooming - When a ladybug is grooming itself, it is making itself clean and neat. Some ways that people groom themselves are by taking baths or showers and combing their hair and brushing their teeth.

Hardy - Plants that can usually survive in fairly cold weather or in bad conditions are called hardy plants.

Hind - Hind means back or rear. A hind wing is a back wing.

Hindwings - Back wings

Invasive - Invasive plants spread into surrounding areas and often take up space needed by nearby plants. Invasive plants must be controlled in order to stop their growing where they are not wanted. Mints are invasive, so gardeners often plant them in pots and sink the pots right into the ground. The pots provide a boundary so that the mint cannot spread beyond the sides of the pot. Even so, some mints have been known to grow over the side of the pot and rest their stems on the ground. If left there long enough, roots will begin to grow along the stems and anchor themselves to the ground where, because of their spreading nature, they will invade the area with new mint plants outside the pot.

Minerals - Minerals are natural material found in the earth. Plants and animals use minerals as nutrients. Calcium, iron, potassium, sodium, and zinc are minerals.

Modified - Modified means partly changed in some way.

Nursery - When talking about plants, a nursery is a place where plants are grown, taken care of, or experimented on. There are many nurseries that grow plants and then sell them to people who put them in their homes or gardens.

Nutrients - A nutrient is something that a living thing needs to live and grow.

Perennial - A perennial plant is a type of plant that will live for three or more years. It may appear to die once the cold seasons come along, but then it will begin to grow again once the warmer weather of spring comes along. (See also annual and biennial.)

Predator - An animal that is a predator takes another animal and uses it in some way. Usually a predator uses the animal it takes as food by killing it and eating it. The animal that is taken and used by the predator is called prey. The ladybug is a predator when it eats its prey, the aphid. However when a bird eats a ladybug, the bird is the predator and the ladybug is the prey.

Prey - Prey is an animal hunted by a predator and used as food.

Sap - Sap is the liquid that flows through a plant. A plant's water and food are in its sap.

Sepals - Sepals are usually green. They are the first part that forms on a bud and, when the bud opens, the sepals remain beneath the petals of the flower. Sometimes sepals hold tightly against the bottom of the petals, and sometimes they curl away from the petals.

Sheltered - If something is sheltered, it is protected. Ladybugs look for sheltered places that are protected from the cold weather, and they spend the winter there. Some plants must be sheltered or protected from the wind for them to grow well.

Spores - In most ferns and club mosses, new plants grow from spores instead of from seeds. Spores are very tiny parts of the fern or club moss. Spores grow into the same kind of plant that they came from. Spores are able to stay in a resting state during droughts, high temperatures, or other harmful conditions. Then when the harmful conditions are gone, spores stop resting and begin germination.

Sprout - If a seed begins to sprout, that means a plant has begun to grow and pushed its way out of the seed.

Transparent - If something is transparent, then you can see through it.