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I'm 38 today. Most would use this as a chance to drop 38 life lessons. Instead, here are 38 weird facts about plants that you probably don't know...use them to impress a random cutie at the coffee shop: 1 - Grass is the most irrigated crop in the U.S., more than corn and wheat COMBINED 2 - Plants don’t NEED soil to grow, some are epiphytic and get their nutrients from air, rain, or debris in cracks of other plants 3 - Most popular houseplants evolved as jungle understory plants, meaning they hate direct sunlight and love high humidity 4 - Coffee is technically a fruit seed, so botanically, you're drinking a cup of berry juice 5 - On the same note, bananas are technically berries, whereas strawberries are "aggregate accessory fruits", NOT berries 6 - If a caterpillar munches on a plant's leaf, it can detect the vibrations and sends out a chemical defense, in a way "hearing" or "feeling" the pest munching 7 - Peppers are likely spicy as a defense adaptation from MAMMALS but not from birds as they can't detect capsaicin, the compound that makes things spicy. Plus birds spread seed, mammals can damage it with their teeth 8 - Almost every citrus fruit you eat is a hybrid of three ancient “parent” fruits - citron, pomelo, and mandarin. For example, an orange is a mandarin + pomelo, lemon is a citron + sour orange, grapefruit is a pomelo + sweet orange 9 - Potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space, which may or may not have influenced Andy Weir's novel, The Martian 10 - People say sunflowers turn to face the sun, which is TRUE but only when they're young. As they mature their heads lock and face east 11 - In perfect conditions, some bamboo can grow 35" in 24 hours...you can literally watch it grow throughout the source of a single day 12 - The corpse flower mimics the smell of rotting flesh to lure flies and beetles as pollinators. It legitimately smells TERRIBLE. Blooms rarely and only stays open for about 48hr 13 - Certain microbes in soil boost serotonin production in humans, a gardener's high. Which makes sense given our historical reliance on foraging and agriculture 14 - Ancient Egyptians used lettuce for its opiate-like properties and fertility rituals, specifically lactucarium, a milky sap it produces 15 - Vanilla beans come from an orchid and are the ONLY edible orchid fruit in the world. They're extremely annoying to grow and have to be hand-pollinated within 12 hours of opening 16 - Carrots weren’t originally orange. They were purple, white, and yellow until Dutch growers bred orange ones in the 1600s to honor the House of Orange 17 - Growing pineapples is a LONG game. It takes up to 2 years to grow just one fruit from planting to harvest if you start from a pineapple top 18 - Some trees that look like individual organisms are actually connected clones. "Pando” in Utah is technically a single quaking aspen with a ton of clones covering 106 acres 19 - Mangroves grow in salt water and filter out salt at the rhizosphere or root area. Without them, tropical shoreline ecosystems would collapse entirely 20 - Broccoli, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts are all the EXACT same species...Brassica oleracea. Humans selectively bred them for different traits: leaves (kale), flower buds (broccoli), stems (kohlrabi), etc. 21 - Saffron is the dried stigma of crocus flowers. Each flower only yields three tiny threads, so it takes 75,000 flowers to make a single pound. On a per-ounce basis, it's more expensive than gold 22 - When plants are stressed, they send out chemical signals you can actually measure with sensors. These signals can trigger nearby plants to react in kind to potential threats 23 - A fig isn't technically a fruit, it's an inverted flower. To make them even weirder, wild figs require a wasp to pollinate them, which then dies inside, meaning you'll be eating wasp bits along with your fig 24 - There's a single seagrass meadow off the Western Australian coast that cloned itself for 4,500 years and now spans 77 square miles, making it technically the largest plant on Earth if you count aquatics 25 - The tallest tree alive is a coast redwood named Hyperion in northern Cali. It’s over 380 feet tall, taller than the Statue of Liberty. Its location is secret because people are people 26 - Tomatoes originated in the Americas and were unknown to Europe until the 1500s. No one in Italy, France, or Spain can claim botanical “ownership” of tomatoes. Their entire cuisines were reinvented by a "New World" fruit 27 - Air plants (Tillandsia) don’t need soil at all. They pull moisture and nutrients straight from the air through specialized leaf scales 28 - Pumpkins and squash were dietary staples for some of the earliest civilizations in the Americas. They provided food, storage vessels, and even sponges from dried gourds. Grown together with beans and corn, you have the "Three Sisters" planting method that's still used to this day 29 - The smell of freshly-cut grass is actually a chemical distress signal from your lawn. It releases VOCs to warn nearby grass of potential injury. 30 - Some seeds can survive thousands of years before sprouting. A 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seed was found in Masada and successfully germinated, bringing an extinct variety back to life 31 - Many agaves flower only once after decades of growth and then die completely. This single massive bloom can reach 30 feet tall and is called a "death bloom" 32 - Some orchids mimic female insects in looks and scent so convincingly that male insects attempt to mate with them, unknowingly spreading pollen...they basically catfish insects to pollinate them 33 - Cocoa trees only grow well in the "chocolate belt" - a strip wrapping around the world 20° north and south of the equator 34 - Apple seeds release cyanide if chewed and crushed. It'd take hundreds of seeds to affect a human, but still quite odd that there's poison in apple seeds 35 - The idea of a “weed” is an entirely human construction, not a botanical one. In nature weeds do not exist. “Weed” just means “plant humans decided to dislike.” 36 - Some plants are pyrophilous, meaning they only germinate after exposed to fire. The smoke releases chemicals called karrikins which signal that it's safe to sprout, likely because the soil is now enriched with broken down organic matter 37 - Venus flytraps evolved in nutrient-poor bogs, which is why they "eat" bugs. It was an adaptation to get nutrients in an area they weren't able to from the soil 38 - Plant roots leak sugars and compounds called exudates to feed soil fungi and bacteria. In return, mycorrhizal fungi trade back water and minerals. Plants are literally farming microbes underground to stay alive.