Plant Adaptations: Habitats

"Rainforests are lush, warm, wet habitats. Trees in the rainforest grow very tall because they have to compete with other plants for sunlight ... "

'Thick forests found in wet areas of the world are called rainforests. Most people are familiar with hot, tropical rainforests filled with trees that stay green year-round. But there are other kinds of rainforests, too...'

"Oceans are areas of salty water that fill enormous basins on the Earth’s surface. Even though Earth has one continuous body of saltwater, scientists and geographers divide it into five different sections ... "

"Polar habitats cover the top and bottom of planet Earth at the North and South Poles. The North Pole is surrounded by the Arctic Ocean. There isn’t any land here, just a group of continually shifting ice sheets ..."

"In regions of the world where it's not extremely hot or cold (called temperate regions), the forests are full of trees with wide, thin leaves ... "

"Deserts are the driest places on Earth—they get fewer than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain a year. Some deserts may get a lot of rain all at once. Then it might not rain again for months—or even years!"

"Deserts are hot, dry places made up mostly of sand, rock, and mountains. In general, deserts are defined as areas where the amount of water that evaporates in the air is greater than the amount that falls to the ground as rain ... "

"Grassland habitats are places that receive more rain than deserts but less precipitation than forests. Most of the plants here are grasses, which don’t need as much water as forest vegetation ... "

"Some mountains form when the big slabs of rock—called tectonic plates—that make up the Earth’s crust crash into each other. Over millions of years, the sheets of rock push up and over one another, creating the mountain ... "

"Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, and streams are all freshwater habitats. So are wetlands like swamps, which have woody plants and trees; and marshes, which have no trees but lots of grasses and reeds ... "