1 . It was the dead of winter when Dad told me that he found a delicate small bag in the snow on his way out of a doctor’s appointment. “It was filled with seeds, so I planted them in pots in the living room window that gets such great light.” Dad was excited to have a planting project in the winter. He missed tending his garden plot, which was the size of a small farm.

I now lived out of state, but Dad reported in his daily phone calls, “These plants seem to double in size overnight. It’s only been a few weeks, and they are almost touching the ceiling.” Since Dad had green fingers, I wasn’t surprised about that. I couldn’t imagine what plant would do so well. I knew photos would not come soon because Dad had to use up the film in his camera and then developed the pictures.

During one call, Dad said, “Today at work, one of my co-workers was wearing a T-shirt with a screen-printed picture of the same leaf as my mysterious houseplants. I told him that I had those same herbs, which were growing like weeds, and I had to get rid of them.” Dad continued, “He eagerly took them off my hands, and now I can see out the window again.”

This awakened my curiosity, and I decided to do some research. In those days, that meant going to the library’s reference section. I did some reading and photocopied some articles. I mailed them to my father.

Dad called, “I just couldn’t believe what I read in the papers you sent. Those pictures are exactly what my plants looked like. No wonder my co-worker was so willing to take them.”

We both laughed till we cried when we realized my father had just raised a harvest of precious Chinese herbs used to ease pain.

1. Why did Dad plant the seeds?

A．Because it was the doctor’s advice.

B．Because he had a small farm at home.

C．Because it satisfied his eagerness for gardening.

D．Because the seeds would bring him rich rewards.

2. What does the underlined word “that” mean in paragraph 2?

A．Dad’s gardening talents.

B．The herbs’ growing quickly.

C．Dad’s efforts to tend the seeds.

D．A planting project in the winter.

3. What can be inferred about the co-worker?

A．He had little interest in the plants.

B．He recognized the value of the plants.

C．He desired to learn from the author’s dad.

D．He wanted to show his knowledge about plants.

4. What is a suitable title for the text?

A．Seed catcher

B．Window scenery

C．Helpful co-worker

D．Innocent gardener

2 . 课文语法填空

    1     has been believed for a long time that talking plants are fantasy. But new research has revealed that they really can communicate with each other.

Some plants are believed to communicate with each other through chemicals. When     2     (attack) by insects, they release tiny amounts of chemicals. This is     3     a warning or a call for help. When other plants detect     4     warnings, they release their own chemicals to drive insects away. Some of the chemicals also attract wasps to kill these insects.

More     5     (surprising), plants also use sound     6     (communicate) with each other though people can’t hear the sound. Some plants make noises with their roots. Some plants “listen” to tell if their neighbouring plants are     7     (help) or unfriendly. Some plants make clicking noises,     8     (indicate) that drought is coming. Most surprisingly of all, plants can form the “wood wide web” to share information or even food with each other.

    9     (scientist) will learn more about the way in     10     plants communicate with each other.

3 . 仔细观察下列有关竹子种植的图画，写一篇有关竹子成长的观察日记。

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4 . Have you ever stopped to consider how empty the world would look without trees? Below are five of the top benefits that trees provide.

    1     When adults who are feeling down spend time in the forest, they feel better. Forest therapy can range from simply walking among the trees for a couple of hours to meditating (冥想) in a forest. The adults note they become more confident and their mood improves after forest therapy.

Trees help you heal faster. Natural environments, including forests, help you reach a more positive state of mind.     2     In fact, sick people with exposure to nature heal faster than those who don’t, even if it’s just a view through a window!

Trees reduce air pollution and improve respiratory (呼吸的) health. Trees take in many harmful pollutants from our environment.     3    These forests reduce an estimated 670, 000 cases of respiratory illness and save 850 lives.

Trees provide oxygen. Trees are like the lungs of our Earth. They supply us with oxygen while taking away our carbon dioxide and ask for nothing in return. A single tree can provide enough oxygen for four people.     4    

Trees cool cities. Trees cool things down by offering shade and through evapotranspiration (蒸腾作用).     5     Trees even save your money on your electric bill. When a tree offers direct shade for your home, you’ll use less air conditioning.

A．Trees cheer you up!

B．Trees help reduce the effects of climate change.

C．This, in turn, affects your overall state of wellness.

D．In fact, large forests can influence regional weather patterns.

E．So plant more trees around your home if you want to feel cooler.

F．And of course, trees also provide plenty of oxygen for birds and other wildlife.

G．For example, in the US, forests remove 17.4 million tons of pollution per year.

5 . 根据所给的首字母或汉语意思，在空白处填入恰当的单词(每空一词)。

Herbal tea has v    1     health benefits. Many people enjoy herbal tea because it can have a positive effect on energy levels. If you haven’t been feeling very well, drink some ginger tea to give your     2     (免疫) system a helping hand. Mint tea, meanwhile, is good for d    3    .

6 . Both humans and animals possess the ability to cry out for help when endangered or threatened. Plants, as it turns out, can too.

“We found that plants usually emit (发出) sounds when they are under stress and that each plant and each type of stress is associated with a specific identifiable sound,” researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel wrote in their findings, published in the scientific journal Cell. “While undetectable to the human ear, the sounds emitted by plants can probably be heard by various animals, such as bats, mice, and insects.”

Stressors like dehydration (脱水) and damage to leaves gave rise to the plants’ high-pitched (尖声的) cries, which ranged from 20 to 250 kHz. The bigger the danger, the more frequent a plant’s signals. “Unstressed plants emitted less than one sound per hour, on average,” researcher Lilach Hadany said, “while the stressed plants — both dehydrated and injured — emitted dozens of sounds every hour.”

To catch these sounds, Hadany’s team surrounded tomato and tobacco plants with super-sensitive microphones. They then fed the data into an artificial intelligence program that could tell the difference between the species of plant and the types of sounds produced.

“Our findings suggest that the world around us is full of plant sounds, and that these sounds contain information,” Hadany wrote. She added that to translate that information, we just need the “right tools such as sensors that tell growers when plants need watering.” Doing so, researchers noted, may allow farmers to judge exactly when and where to water crops. Saving water, increasing harvests, and lowering stress for both plant and humankind.

1. What did researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel find?

A．Creatures tend to cry out for help when in danger.

B．Plants can give off sounds when they are stressed.

C．Plant sounds can be heard by both animals and humans.

D．Plants make the same sound whatever type of stress they have.

2. What does the author want to show in paragraph 3?

A．The influence of stress on plants.

B．The urgency of relieving stress of plants.

C．The possibility of plants emitting sounds.

D．The importance of conducting the research.

3. Why was an artificial intelligence program used in the research?

A．To help get rid of plant stress.

B．To identify the types of stress.

C．To collect sounds emitted by plants.

D．To analyze the collected sounds of plants.

4. What can we learn from Hadany’s words in the last paragraph?

A．The research is of practical value.

B．It’s difficult to understand plant sounds.

C．Further research is needed in the future.

D．It’s as easy as pie for farmers to grow crops.

7 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入 1 个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Travelling around Europe is always     1     (excite), because it’s full of interesting things to see, from historical, culturally important monuments (历史遗迹) to natural sites. But Europe is also full     2     magical and mysterious locations that will surprise even the experienced travellers and blow the minds of anyone who sees     3     (they).

Some of them are natural, while others are man-made. But there’s something similar about all these places — all of them are so mysterious     4     if you go there, you’ll feel completely different and you’ll never forget your experience.

Are you ready     5     (take) the most amazing journey of your life? First and foremost, put Crooked Forest in Europe on your list!

One of the most wonderful     6     (forest) in the world, Crooked Forest is located in Poland, close to the border with Germany. It’s a small grove (小树林) and all trees in it have a quite strange shape. They     7     (bend) over almost 90 degrees at the trunk and then they twist back straight again and keep on growing straight up, like all normal trees do.

The only thing we know about this forest is that it was planted in     8     1930s. Why the trees took this strange shape still remains a mystery. According to one of the theories, it was done to produce     9     (natural) bended wood for boats, but the     10     (produce) was stopped as a result of the German invasion.

8 . Scientists have found the world’s biggest seagrass ecosystem in the Bahamas. Seagrass refers to dozens of different species of flowering plants that live entirely underwater, producing energy through photosynthesis (光合作用) by absorbing sunlight. Like their land-based relatives, seagrasses have roots and leaves and also produce seeds. Seagrasses grow in salty coastal waters around the world, usually in shallow waters where sunlight is more plentiful. Since seagrasses carry out the process of photosynthesis, they are known to be very effective at storing carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas. This is because photosynthesis involves plants using sunlight to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen.

These underwater plants play an important role in carbon sequestration, in which carbon is stored in the environment rather than being allowed to float freely in the atmosphere where it can contribute to global warming. According to Gallagher, one of the new study’s authors, carbon enters the ocean as part of the carbon cycle, and the seagrass takes in this carbon through photosynthesis via their leaves. This is part one. The second part is when the seagrass transports this carbon through itself, burying and storing it in its root system. Seagrass stores this carbon permanently.

The purpose of the study by Gallagher and his colleagues was to map seagrass in the Bahamas, using data from 15 tiger sharks equipped with tracking instruments that could also take images of the sea floor. That information was then combined with reports from 2,500 surveys by human divers.

Mark Huxham, professor of teaching and research in environmental biology, said “This brilliant study uses imaginative and exciting new technology, in partnership with tiger sharks. We know seagrass is important for the health of our seas and our planet, but there are major gaps in our understanding about it.”

1. What is Paragraph 1 mainly about?

A．The cause of photosynthesis.

B．Living conditions for seagrass.

C．Environmental effect of seagrass.

D．The introduction of photosynthesis.

2. What does the underlined part “carbon sequestration” refer to in Paragraph 2?

A．Absorbing carbon from the air.

B．Reducing carbon in the roots.

C．Releasing carbon into the air.

D．Keeping carbon in sea plants.

3. What may Mark Huxham agree with?

A．Scientists have fully studied seagrass.

B．The study contributes to a new technology.

C．There is still a lot of work to study seagrass.

D．Tiger sharks will be the focus of future studies.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To inform.

B．To criticize.

C．To advertise.

D．To persuade.

9 . Animals can adapt quickly to survive unfavorable environmental conditions. Evidence is mounting to show that plants can, too. A paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science details how plants are rapidly adapting to the effects of climate change, and how they are passing down these adaptations to their offspring(后代).

Plants are facing more environmental stresses than ever. For example, climate change is making winters shorter in many locations, and plants are responding. “Many plants require a minimum period of cold in order to set up their environmental clock to define their flowering time,” says Martinelli, a plant geneticist at the University of Florence. “As cold seasons shorten, plants have adapted to require shorter periods of cold to delay flowering. These mechanisms allow plants to avoid flowering in periods when they have fewer opportunities to reproduce.”

Because plants don’t have neural(神经的) networks, their memory is based entirely on cellular(细胞的),molecular(分子的),and biochemical networks. These networks make up what the researchers call somatic memory(体细胞记忆). “It allows plants to recognize the occurrence of a previous environmental condition and to react accordingly,” says Martinelli.

These somatic memories can then be passed to the plants’ offspring via epigenetics(表现遗传). “Several examples demonstrate the existence of molecular mechanisms modulating plant memory to environmental stresses and affecting the adaptation of offspring to these stresses,” says Martinelli.

Going forward, Martinelli hopes to understand even more about the genes that are being passed down. “We are particularly interested in decoding the epigenetic alphabet without changes in DNA sequence(序列),”he says. “This is especially important when we consider the rapid climate change, we observe today that every living organism, including plants, needs to quickly adapt to survive.”

1. What adaptations have plants made to shortened cold seasons?

A．They have shortened their flowering time.

B．They have got more chances to reproduce.

C．They have avoided flowering in cold seasons.

D．They have adjusted their environmental clock.

2. What can we learn about somatic memory?

A．It is entirely based on neural networks.

B．It can help the plants’ offspring to survive.

C．It can help relieve environmental stresses.

D．It disturbs the plants’ biochemical networks.

3. What does the underlined word “modulating” mean in paragraph 4?

A．Adjusting.	B．Treasuring.
C．Recording.	D．Sharing.

4. Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?

A．Plants are smart about flowering time

B．Plants can also adapt to climate change

C．Environmental stresses challenge plants

D．Mysteries of plant genes are to be unfolded

10 . The flower doesn’t use verbs or adjectives to tell a pollinator (传粉昆虫) that it looks pretty when the pollinator flies by, at least not as far as we know. But plants do respond to the sound of bees buzzing through the air, greeting them with more sweet nectar (花蜜) in hopes of attracting them to land. It is a poetic and practical language that increases everyone’s chances of survival. Scientists increasingly believe that animals and plants communicate with each other. Thanks to a new study on “natural language”, now there’s additional evidence that measures how evening primroses (月见草) respond to sound.

The research team played sounds like that of bees’ wings beating to evening primroses. The flowers vibrated (振动) when they heard the sounds. It’s as if they were listening. Other sounds, played at different frequencies, didn’t lead to the same result. The flowers vibrated, but didn’t increase the sweetness of their nectar production. The average sugar concentration was 20% higher in flowers exposed to pollinator-like frequencies, but remained stable at the sound of higher frequency recordings and silence.

These findings led the researchers to argue that flowers function as a plant’s ears, informing the plant as a whole of what’s going on nearby and when it’s time to attract a pollinator. Plants have to be sensitive to the sound of pollinators because they have an interdependent relationship with one another. The plants rely on the pollinators for reproduction, so they produce a sweeter nectar as a kind of seduction. And the bees eat the nectar, which means they’ll be adjusted to what the flowers are doing and drawn to the sweeter food. It pays for flowers to be able to distinguish between the sound of bats as compared to bees, for example, and for the pollinators, it’s worthwhile to find the best food in the least amount of time.

While this study is just a first step in understanding how plants respond to sound, and studies on other species must be done next to better understand how flowers listen.

1. How did the researchers do the experiment?

A．By vibrating the flowers.	B．By exposing plants to pollinators.
C．By imitating the sound of insects.	D．By increasing the sweetness of nectar.

2. What does the underlined word “seduction” mean in paragraph 3?

A．Production.

B．Attraction.

C．Value.

D．Adjustment.

3. In which aspect do plants benefit from listening?

A．Saving resources.	B．Providing more food.
C．Knowing different species.	D．Promoting the reproduction.

4. What does the study mainly focus on?

A．How certain plants react to sound.	B．How to interact with plants.
C．The languages used in nature.	D．The methods of survival for plants.