People all over the world eat rice. _______ people in Asia, Africa and South America eat it every day in their lives. Some people almost do not eat _______ except rice.  

Rice is a kind of _______. There are more than 7,000 kinds of rice. Most kinds are water plants. Farmers _______ rice in many countries even in the southern part of Russia and in eastern Australia.

No one really knows where rice _______. Someone in China wrote _______ it almost 5,000 years ago. Some scientists think that rice _______ in west Africa, but _______ think it came _______ India and then was ________ to other parts of the world.

Bananas are the perfect snack. Not only are they sweet and delicious, but they are easy to carry around, so you can take them anywhere. Best of all, bananas provide different things that the human body needs!

Bananas grow best in warm places that get lots of rain. They grow on plants that look like trees. The banana plant, however, is considered a herb rather than a tree because it doesn’t have a strong, woody stem. The plants can grow as high as 30 feet. When they reach their full height, flowers grow out from the stem. These flowers produce bananas.

Two or three times each year, the plants produce fruit. The bananas grow together, which seem like “hands”. A “hand” is made up of 10 to 20 bananas. Growers sometimes call bananas “fingers”. Each bunch(丛) of bananas has about 15 “hands”, and so a whole bunch may have as many as 200 bananas and can weigh more than 100 pounds.

After about three months, the bananas are ready to be picked. At this point, they still aren’t the sunny yellow colour of bananas. Farmers pick them when they’re green. That’s how they’re shipped to stores. They turn yellow along the way and are ready to be sold.

If you love bananas, you’ve got a lot of company. Americans have been enjoying bananas since the first shipment arrived in the United States in 1876. Today, Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit. More bananas are sold than apples and grapes together. Every American eats over 26 pounds of bananas each year!

When we talk of plants, most of us will think of things that grow from the ground and have green leaves, but there are plants that do not look or act like other plants. Some of these belong to a special class of plants called fungi (真菌).

Fungi may appear almost everywhere. They commonly grow in wet places where they can get food and water easily. Because fungi do not have green leaves to make their own food, fungi must take their food from animals, other plants or water. Some fungi live on dead or rotting (腐烂的) wood, while others grow on living trees or in dirt. Mushrooms (蘑菇) are the best-known fungi.

There are many kinds of mushrooms appearing in all shapes and sizes. For example, cauliflower (菜花) mushrooms are found in the forest from July to October. They can grow to be as heavy as fifty pounds! They grow at the foot of trees. Squirrel’s bread (松茸) is another kind of wild mushrooms. Its appearance and use can explain its name. These fungi look like small golden cakes. Squirrels can easily eat them or carry them off to their holes to eat later.

The mushrooms in food shops are carefully grown by people and they are safe to eat. People are warned never to touch or taste wild mushrooms because some of them are deadly. Even less dangerous ones can still make a person very sick.