Are there any wanna-be botanists out there? If so, todays post should really interest you. Finding interesting trivia about plants was a serious challenge but I’ve had some success. Here are twenty items you never knew about plants and botany. Here we go . . .

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• At 167 calories per 3.5 ounces, avocados have the highest number of calories of any fruit.

• The foxglove plant can help prevent congestive heart failure.

• The cellulose in celery (mostly in its stringy fibers) is impossible for humans to digest. Most of the celery passes right through your digestive tract.

• Juniper berries smell so strongly of evergreen trees that they have been chewed as a breath freshener.

• Orchids have the smallest seeds. It takes more than 1.25 million seeds to weigh one gram.

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• Oak trees do not have acorns until they are 50 years old or older.

• Pollen is considered the “male” part of a plants reproductive system.

• The greens, you see covering ponds might actually be a carpet of duckweed – the smallest plant with a complete root, stem, and leaf structure.

• Cayenne pepper stimulates the appetite, as do the herbs dill, celery, dandelion, caraway, anise, garlic, leek, mint, tarragon, saffron, and parsley.

• The word “herb” is from the old Sanskrit word bharb, meaning “to eat”.

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• A lemon will lose 20% of its vitamin C content after being left at room temperature for eight hours, or in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

• The eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, along with the potato and tomato.

• An uncooked apple is 84% water.

• If you wash an area of skin that has been exposed to poison ivy within 3 min. after exposure, the chemical urushhiol does not have time to penetrate the skin.

• The herb peony, when dried and chewed, can help heal a cold sore.

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• A banana is technically an herb because it grows on dense, waterfilled leaf stalks that die after the first fruit is produced. Botanists call the banana plant a herbaceous perennial.

• Bananas are one of the easiest fruits to digest and trigger very few allergies. This is why they are an ideal food for babies.

• It takes a coffee bean plant five years to yield consumable fruit.

• The most widely cultivated and extensively used nut in the world is the almond.

• Plant life in the oceans makes up 85% of all the greenery on earth.

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FOR ALL OF YOU GARDENERS OUT THERE