The builders of every leaf, flower, and tree. Plant cells can do something amazing that your cells can't: make their own food from sunlight!
Explore in 3D
Spin the plant cell
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Lesson 1
Three special parts
Plant cells have everything an animal cell has: a nucleus, a membrane, cytoplasm, and mitochondria. But they also have three extra parts your cells don't:
Cell wall. A stiff box around the outside, made of a tough stuff called cellulose. It keeps the plant strong and in shape.
A big vacuole (VAK-yoo-ole). A giant water tank that can fill up most of the cell.
Chloroplasts (KLOR-uh-plasts). Little green solar panels that make food from sunlight.
Wow!
Paper and cotton are made mostly of cellulose from plant cell walls. Your T-shirt might be made of old plant cell walls!
Lesson 2
Making food from sunlight
You have to eat food to get energy. Plants make their own! This is called photosynthesis (foe-toe-SIN-thuh-sis). It happens inside the chloroplasts:
Sunlight shines on the leaves.
Water comes up from the roots.
Carbon dioxide, a gas from the air, gets in through tiny holes in the leaves.
The chloroplasts mix them together to make sugar (the plant's food) and oxygen, which goes out into the air.
Chloroplasts are full of a green stuff called chlorophyll. That's why leaves are green!
Try this
Put a fresh green leaf in a clear glass of water and set it in bright sunshine for a few hours. Look closely. Do you see tiny bubbles on the leaf? Those come from the leaf, and some of that gas is oxygen.
Wow!
Much of the oxygen you breathe was made by plants and by tiny plant-like living things in the ocean.
Lesson 3
The water tank that holds plants up
When a plant has plenty of water, each cell's vacuole fills up like a water balloon and pushes hard against the cell wall. Millions of cells pushing at once make the stems and leaves stand up tall and firm.
When a plant doesn't get enough water, the vacuoles shrink. The cells stop pushing, and the plant droops. That's called wilting.
Try this
Scroll up to the 3D plant cell and press Dry it out. Watch the vacuole shrink!
Try this too
Find a floppy piece of lettuce or celery. Put it in a bowl of cold water for an hour. The cells soak up water, the vacuoles fill, and it gets crunchy again!
Lesson 4
Why plant cells matter to you
Without plant cells, we couldn't live! Here's what they give us:
Food. Every meal starts with plants. Even a cow eats grass to make milk.
Oxygen to breathe.
Wood, paper, and cotton from tough cell walls.
Medicines. Some medicines were first found in plants.
Wow!
The tallest tree in the world is a redwood that is more than 110 meters tall. That's taller than a 30-story building, and it's all made of tiny plant cells!
Quiz
Plant cell quiz
Watch and learn
The Plant Cell and Its Parts
By Smile and Learn. A tour of the parts that make plant cells special.