What is "plant"

Plant \Plant\, n. [AS. plante, L. planta.]

1. A vegetable; an organized living being, generally without feeling and voluntary motion, and having, when complete, a root, stem, and leaves, though consisting sometimes only of a single leafy expansion, or a series of cellules, or even a single cellule.

   Note: Plants are divided by their structure and methods of reproduction into two series, ph[ae]nogamous or flowering plants, which have true flowers and seeds, and cryptogamous or flowerless plants, which have no flowers, and reproduce by minute one-celled spores. In both series are minute and simple forms and others of great size and complexity. [1913 Webster] As to their mode of nutrition, plants may be considered as self-supporting and dependent. Self-supporting plants always contain chlorophyll, and subsist on air and moisture and the matter dissolved in moisture, and as a general rule they excrete oxygen, and use the carbonic acid to combine with water and form the material for their tissues. Dependent plants comprise all fungi and many flowering plants of a parasitic or saprophytic nature. As a rule, they have no chlorophyll, and subsist mainly or wholly on matter already organized, thus utilizing carbon compounds already existing, and not excreting oxygen. But there are plants which are partly dependent and partly self-supporting. [1913 Webster] The movements of climbing plants, of some insectivorous plants, of leaves, stamens, or pistils in certain plants, and the ciliary motion of zo["o]spores, etc., may be considered a kind of voluntary motion.

2. A bush, or young tree; a sapling; hence, a stick or staff. ``A plant of stubborn oak.''
   --Dryden.

3. The sole of the foot. [R.] ``Knotty legs and plants of clay.''
   --B. Jonson.

4. (Com.) The whole machinery and apparatus employed in carrying on a trade or mechanical business; also, sometimes including real estate, and whatever represents investment of capital in the means of carrying on a business, but not including material worked upon or finished products; as, the plant of a foundry, a mill, or a railroad.

5. A plan; an artifice; a swindle; a trick. [Slang]

   It was n't a bad plant, that of mine, on Fikey.
   --Dickens.

6. (Zo["o]l.)

   1. An oyster which has been bedded, in distinction from one of natural growth.

   2. A young oyster suitable for transplanting. [Local, U.S.]

      Plant bug (Zo["o]l.), any one of numerous hemipterous insects which injure the foliage of plants, as Lygus lineolaris, which damages wheat and trees.

      Plant cutter (Zo["o]l.), a South American passerine bird of the genus Phytotoma, family Phytotomid[ae]. It has a serrated bill with which it cuts off the young shoots and buds of plants, often doing much injury.

      Plant louse (Zo["o]l.), any small hemipterous insect which infests plants, especially those of the families Aphid[ae] and Psyllid[ae]; an aphid.

Plant \Plant\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Planted; p. pr. & vb. n. Planting.] [AS. plantian, L. plantare. See Plant, n.]

1. To put in the ground and cover, as seed for growth; as, to plant maize.

2. To set in the ground for growth, as a young tree, or a vegetable with roots.

   Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees.
   --Deut. xvi. 21.

3. To furnish, or fit out, with plants; as, to plant a garden, an orchard, or a forest.

4. To engender; to generate; to set the germ of.

   It engenders choler, planteth anger.
   --Shak.

5. To furnish with a fixed and organized population; to settle; to establish; as, to plant a colony.

   Planting of countries like planting of woods.
   --Bacon.

6. To introduce and establish the principles or seeds of; as, to plant Christianity among the heathen.

7. To set firmly; to fix; to set and direct, or point; as, to plant cannon against a fort; to plant a standard in any place; to plant one's feet on solid ground; to plant one's fist in another's face.

8. To set up; to install; to instate.

   We will plant some other in the throne.
   --Shak.

Plant \Plant\, v. i. To perform the act of planting.

I have planted; Apollos watered.
--1 Cor. iii. 6.

"put in the ground to grow," Old English plantian, from Latin plantare (see plant (n.)). Reinforced by cognate Old French planter. Without reference to growing, "to insert firmly," late 14c. Of colonies from c.1300. Figuratively, of ideas, etc., from early 15c. Meaning "to bury" is U.S. slang from U.S., 1855. Related: Planted; planting.

Old English plante "young tree or shrub, herb newly planted," from Latin planta "sprout, shoot, cutting" (source of Spanish planta, French plante), perhaps from *plantare "to drive in with the feet, push into the ground with the feet," from planta "sole of the foot," from nasalized form of PIE *plat- "to spread, flat" (see place (n.)).\n

\nBroader sense of "any vegetable life, vegetation generally" is first recorded 1550s. Most extended usages are from the verb, on the notion of "something planted;" such as "construction for an industrial process," 1789, at first with reference to the set-up of machinery, later also the building; also slang meaning "a spy" (1812). Many of these follow similar developments in the French form of the word. German Pflanz, Irish cland, Welsh plant are from Latin.

n. An organism that is not an animal, especially an organism capable of photosynthesis. Typically a small or herbaceous organism of this kind, rather than a tree. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To place (a seed or plant) in soil or other substrate in order that it may live and grow. 2 (context transitive English) To place (an object, or sometimes a person), often with the implication of intending deceit. 3 (context transitive English) To place or set something firmly or with conviction.

1. n. buildings for carrying on industrial labor; "they built a large plant to manufacture automobiles" [syn: works, industrial plant]

2. a living organism lacking the power of locomotion [syn: flora, plant life]

3. something planted secretly for discovery by another; "the police used a plant to trick the thieves"; "he claimed that the evidence against him was a plant"

4. an actor situated in the audience whose acting is rehearsed but seems spontaneous to the audience

1. v. put or set (seeds or seedlings) into the ground; "Let's plant flowers in the garden" [syn: set]

2. fix or set securely or deeply; "He planted a knee in the back of his opponent"; "The dentist implanted a tooth in the gum" [syn: implant, engraft, embed, imbed]

3. set up or lay the groundwork for; "establish a new department" [syn: establish, found, constitute, institute]

4. place into a river; "plant fish"

5. place something or someone in a certain position in order to secretly observe or deceive; "Plant a spy in Moscow"; "plant bugs in the dissident's apartment"

6. put firmly in the mind; "Plant a thought in the students' minds" [syn: implant]

__NOTOC__ A plant is a living organism that generally does not move and absorbs nutrients from its surroundings. Typically it has been placed deliberately rather than naturally.

Plant may also refer to:

A plant in control theory is the combination of process and actuator. A plant is often referred to with a transfer function (not uncommonly in the s-domain) which indicates the relation between an input signal and the output signal of a system without feedback, commonly determined by physical properties of the system. An example would be an actuator with its transfer of the input of the actuator to its physical displacement. In a system with feedback, the plant still has the same transfer function, but a control unit and a feedback loop (with their respective transfer functions) are added to the system.

Plants, also called green plants, are multicellular eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. They form an unranked clade Viridiplantae (Latin for green plants) that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants exclude the red and brown algae, the fungi, archaea, bacteria and animals.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts, derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are also characterized by sexual reproduction, modular and indeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.

Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but , there are thought to be 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants (see the table below). Green plants provide most of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in great variety, they have served as the source of most medicines and drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.