How Trees Grow

From a tiny seed

Look up at a tall tree. It is big and strong. But it did not start that way. Every tree began as one tiny seed. An acorn is a seed. It is small enough to hold in your hand. Inside it is a baby oak tree, waiting to grow.

The seed wakes up

A seed falls to the ground. The rain makes the soil soft and wet. The seed drinks the water and wakes up. First, a little root grows down into the soil. Then a tiny green shoot pushes up to the light. The baby tree has begun!

What a tree needs 🌧️☀️

A tree cannot grow all by itself. It needs four things:

• Water from the rain and soil
• Sunlight from the sky
• Air all around it
• Good soil to hold its roots

With these, the little tree gets bigger and bigger, year by year. The leaves drink in the sunlight. The roots drink the water. Slowly, slowly, the tree grows tall.

The parts of a tree 🌳

A growing tree has special parts, and each one has a job:

• The roots grow down. They drink water and hold the tree still so the wind cannot blow it over.
• The trunk is the tall, woody middle. It holds the tree up high.
• The branches spread out wide.
• The leaves catch the sunlight and make food for the tree.

Slow and strong

Trees grow very slowly. A tree does not get tall in a day, or a week. It takes many, many years. Each year the trunk grows a little wider and a little taller. If you cut a tree trunk, you can count the rings inside. Each ring is one year of the tree's life! A tree with ten rings is ten years old.

Some trees, like big oak trees, live longer than people. They can be hundreds of years old. The biggest trees of all are giant redwoods. They are taller than a tall building! All of them began as one tiny seed, just like the acorn.

Trees help us 🌎

Trees do so much for us. They give cool shade on a sunny day. They are a home for birds, squirrels and bugs. They give us tasty fruit, like apples. And the leaves clean the air, so we can breathe. That is why we should look after trees and plant new ones.

Grow your own tree

You can watch a tree begin to grow! In autumn, find a fat, healthy acorn under an oak tree. Push it gently into a small pot of damp soil, just under the top. Put the pot on a sunny windowsill and water it a little when the soil feels dry. Be patient. In spring, a tiny green shoot may push up. Watch it each week and draw what you see. You have grown a baby tree!

A tree changes in every season. See how in Trees Through the Year. And to meet all the parts of a plant, read The Parts of a Plant.