1 . Vertical (垂直的) farming involves using vertically piled layers and other innovative resources to help your crops grow.
Reduce water usage. Watering a vertical garden is easy, simple, and uses less water. If your plants are grown in a traditional way, you’ll need lots of water to keep up with your plants’ growth.
Save space. As a small, house owner, space is a big concern. However, vertical farming ensures that you can create a garden in your home and fully enjoy the experience.
Cut down on chemicals and pesticides. Vertical gardens will not require you to invest in pesticides and chemical fertilizers to keep your plants alive. In addition, insects will not have easy access to your plants since you’ll be gardening in a controlled environment.
| A．Increase food production. |
| B．Produce food consistently. |
| C．Having a garden means you need to work with the space available. |
| D．It comes in handy without causing any inconvenience to your living arrangements. |
| E．However, if you invest in vertical farming, your water usage will dramatically drop. |
| F．So the food grown is organic and safe for consumption making it an excellent choice. |
| G．It enables you to take full advantage of walls and spaces that would otherwise stay useless. |
2 . Britain has a stubborn enemy called the “devil plant”, the Japanese knotweed (虎杖). The name originated in Japan, but it became a promoter behind a plant disaster in Britain. Initially it was introduced to England as a landscape plant. However, over time it has evolved into a harsh plant difficult to control.
The plant is disreputable (坏名声的) mainly because of its strong ability to survive. The Japanese knotweed can grow at an amazing speed. What’s more, Japan’s knotweed is penetrating. As long as you give it a small gap, it can follow it and make rapid growth. This gap may be a crack in the road, or a wall crack in the house, and even some Japanese knotweed will start to grow from the foundation of the house, gradually “destroy” the whole house. Such an invasion (入侵) is a nightmare for the British. The British simply love and hate the plant, but so far, they are still unable to find an effective way to remove it.
Fortunately, China’s knotweed is not identical to Japan’s, and in the China’s ecosystem, there are many natural enemies against it. As a result, China has not experienced a knotweed invasion as severe as Britain. Additionally, its tender stem can be made into delicious food. The root of knotweed is a very good Chinese medicine. Therefore, in some places there’s also a need to plant knotweed, to obtain economic benefits.
This case gives us a profound inspiration that it is important to be careful when introducing alien species and to fully understand the characteristics of plants or animals and the effects they may cause in a new environment, otherwise it may be easy to spend a huge amount of money every year to clean up the Japanese knotweed, as in the UK.
1. Why did Britain bring in Japanese knotweed at first?| A．To make profits. | B．For decoration. |
| C．For scientific research. | D．To promote biodiversity. |
| A．Fading away. | B．Dying out. |
| C．Multiplying rapidly. | D．Growing steadily. |
| A．China’s ecosystem is not damaged by knotweed. |
| B．Knotweed is in great demand in the whole China. |
| C．Knotweed has made most of the Chinese people rich. |
| D．Chinese medicine includes knotweed’s stems and roots. |
| A．A Natural Phenomenon We Know |
| B．A Plant That People Love and Hate |
| C．Alien Species’ Effect on the Local Economy |
| D．The Fight Against Invasive Plants and Animals |
1. Why is the baobab’s trunk really fat?
| A．It is shaped by people. |
| B．It stores a large quantity of water. |
| C．It must be strong enough to support the tree. |
| A．About 12 metres. | B．About 15 metres. | C．About 30 metres. |
| A．Shops. | B．Wildlife habitats. | C．Bus shelters. |
4 . It turns out that plants are getting help from their friends underground—quite a bit more than scientists had realized. A global team of researchers has calculated that around 36% of the carbon released into the atmosphere each year from the burning of fossil fuels is captured and delivered to a complicated system of fungi that lives beneath our feet.
Plants take carbon dioxide from the air and use it to make sugars and fats. These are sent down to their roots, where they are taken up by so-called mycorrhizal (菌根) fungi. In exchange, the fungi provide the plants with water and essential nutrients from the soil. The more carbon these fungi are able to draw in， the more carbon dioxide gets captured by plants.
Mycorrhizal fungi helped plants get established on land several hundred millions of years ago, and today’s plants would have a hard time functioning without their partners under the ground. Yet “mycorrhizal fungi have been largely overlooked,” said To by Kiers, executive director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. “They represent an incredibly important part of the carbon cycle, and we are only just beginning to understand how they work,” she said. “The urgency to understand that and link it to biodiversity belowground is the most important.”
The researchers also said that plants associated with mycorrhizal fungi can take in eight times more carbon than plants that are not. Stephanie Kivlin, an ecologist at University of Tennessee, said the study is a crucial step toward improving our understanding of the plant-fungi duo’s role in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “These mutualisms (互利共栖) can act as a critical carbon sink in many ecosystems on the land,” she said.
Not only do the fungi take in carbon from plants, they also help keep that carbon safely belowground by creating a sticky compound that holds the soil together. Although mycorrhizal fungi have short life spans-only a few years—their usefulness doesn’t end after death. “This is my favorite part,” Kiers said. “After they die, they make a dead underground network that acts as a scaffolding to hold the soil together, locking the carbon in place. ”
1. What do the researchers find?| A．Fungi absorb carbon from plants. | B．Carbon is essential to plants. |
| C．Carbon is released into the air. | D．Plants exchange food with fungi. |
| A．Carbon sink reduces carbon dioxide. | B．Carbon cycle is linked to biodiversity. |
| C．Plants nowadays take in carbon as usual. | D．Plant-fungi system functions efficiently. |
| A．They become sticky scaffolding. | B．They help prevent carbon release. |
| C．They provide vital nutrients. | D．They change into fossil fuels. |
| A．A complicated problem. | B．An overlooked plant. |
| C．An underground green guard. | D．A useful ecosystem. |
5 . When scientists talk about recent extinctions, birds and mammals (哺乳动物) get most of the attention. But the first global analysis of its kind finds it is twice as many plants that have disappeared as birds, mammals, and amphibians (两栖动物) combined.
Researchers reviewed published research, international databases, and museum specimens such as grasses from Madagascar, finding that 571 plants species have gone extinct in the past 250 years. One reason why the total is higher than that of the well-studied animals is that there are simply more species of plants. Looking at percentages, the situation is worse for mammals and birds. An estimated 5% of those species have gone extinct, compared with 0.2% of plants.
The loss includes the Chile sandalwood tree in the South Pacific, which was cut down for its fragrant (芳香的) wood. It was last seen on Robinson Crusoe Island in 1908. The extinction rates among plants have been highest for trees and shrubs on islands, which often have species that occur nowhere else, and in regions with rich diversity, especially the tropics and in Mediterranean climates.
Just a few years later, the world lost the banded Trinity (Thismia americana), a leafless plant that grew entirely underground except for its flowers. Most species of this kind of plant grow in rainforests, but this plant was first described in 1912 in a sandy wetland in Chicago, Illinois, and was wiped out by development.
According to the team’s report in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the total of 571 extinct plant species is four times higher than the official listing kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Even so, it is probably still an underestimate (低估), as less is known about the status of plants in Africa and South America than on other continents. Many of these species may disappear, too. A major review of the status of global biodiversity recently estimated that more than a million species, including 14% of plant and animal diversity, are threatened with extinction.
1. What caused the extinction of the Chile sandalwood tree?| A．Climate change. | B．The market demand. |
| C．Environmental pollution. | D．The decline of the habitat. |
| A．It flowered without bearing seeds. |
| B．It disappeared during the 19th century. |
| C．It was a flowering plant without leaves. |
| D．It was a rare plant growing underground. |
| A．Their current situation is more worrying. |
| B．About one plant species dies out every year. |
| C．More plant species will keep alive in the reserve. |
| D．They would be replaced by other new species soon. |
| A．Sports. | B．Nature. | C．Entertainment. | D．Figures. |
In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the China Flower House offers a wide range of lifelike artificial flowers and plants
“Pakistani people love to decorate their houses, offices, gardens, wedding parties and other events
“Besides
Abbas said, “I
Naseem Zadi said, “I have come to buy flowers for my newly-built house,
7 . How to Save Money Watering Your Garden
Jessica Damiano writes about gardening. In her latest story, she talks about cost-saving ways to keep your garden watered during the hot months of summer. Let’s look at some of Damiano’s recommendations.
Know when and how to water
How you water is just as important as when you water. If you water quickly every day, it does not help the roots, which can extend over 30 centimeters into the soil.
Catch and reuse water
You can recycle water from boiling vegetables or eggs. Just make sure the water does not have salt in it.
Most gardeners just think about which plants look good and the plants’ sunlight needs. But watering needs should be considered, too. Drought-resistant plants should not be overwatered. It is best to use plants that are native to the area where you live. These plants tend to be resistant to drought. They just need regular watering in their first two years.
| A．Choose native plants |
| B．Instead, water the soil less often, but deeply |
| C．The best time to water plants is in the morning |
| D．It is also good practice to catch and use rainwater |
| E．This helps make the cities greener and improve air quality |
| F．Give some thought to how many plants there are in your garden |
| G．After that, they can live on just rainwater except during heat waves |
8 . Thirsty or stressed plants do not suffer in silence. Instead, they make high-pitched(尖锐的) sounds, according to a study published in the journal Cell.
The reason why you have probably never heard the plants’ sounds is that most humans are only able to hear sounds as high as 20 kilohertz (kHz), but the plants made sounds mostly between 40 and 80 kHz, Lilach Hadany, a co-author of the study at Tel Aviv University, tells Business Insider’s Marianne Guenot.
Plants, obviously, do not have organs to make sounds. Lilach says, the present popular theory on how they make noises centers on plants’ xylem(木质部), the tubes that transport water from their roots to their stems(根茎) and leaves. In the process of transporting, when an air bubble(气泡) forms or breaks in the xylem, it might make a little noise; bubbles are more likely to form when a plant is suffering from drought. But the exact process requires further study, Lilach explains.
To listen in to plants, Lilach and her co-workers placed tobacco and tomato plants in small boxes equipped with microphones. First, they stopped providing water to some plants in the boxes and cut the stems of others. Then, the microphones were used to pick up any noises made by the plants even though they couldn’t hear them. Researchers found that the sounds did show the specific types of stresses plants were experiencing. Thirsty tomato and tobacco plants made an average of about 35 and 11 sounds per hour, individually, while cut tomato and tobacco plants made 25 and 15 noises per hour.
In theory, these recorded sounds could help farmers know about which crops are most in need of water. “When more and more areas are exposed to drought due to climate change, efficient water use becomes even more important, for both food security and ecology,” Lilach with her co-workers write.
1. Why do humans fail to hear the sounds of plants?| A．The sounds are stressful. |
| B．The sounds are beyond human’s hearing range. |
| C．The sounds are low-pitched. |
| D．The sounds are between 20kHz and 40kHz. |
| A．Suffering from lack of air. |
| B．Stems and leaves transporting water. |
| C．More air bubbles gathering in the roots. |
| D．Air bubbles’ forming or breaking in the xylem. |
| A．Noises can be picked up by microphones. | B．Plants make more sounds in small boxes. |
| C．Cut plants suffer the same as thirsty ones. | D．Different sounds indicate plants’ stress types. |
| A．To harvest the crops. | B．To solve the food problem. |
| C．To locate the thirsty crops. | D．To prevent climate change. |
9 . Digging out potato tubers (茎块) is one of the greatest rewards gardens have to offer. Children in particular are surprised at seeing these tubers that almost magically become chips, mash (泥) or baked potatoes.
Happily, potatoes are very easy to grow. Seed tubers are placed in good garden soil, ideally with some compost (堆肥) for every square meter, in a sunny spot, about 10cm deep at 30cm intervals in rows 60-70cm apart.
Seed tubers are offered as earliest and second earliest and maincrop. The second earliest and maincrops can be stored for winter use but earliest are usually consumed in summer.
Seasoned potato growers buy early seed potatoes in February and place them in a cool, reasonably light place and let them sprout (发芽). It takes six weeks for small sprouts to form.
Early potatoes are typically planted from middle March in the South, but are likely to emerge before the first season finishes in May. The shoots are frost-sensitive requiring protection on cod nights with either earth or newspapers.
Second early and maincrop potatoes are planted in middle April—the frost risk will be low, but not absent, by the time they emerge. As the stems (茎) grow, soil should be drawn around them until the leaves meet in the row in early summer. At this stage, the potato field is a series of ridges (脊，垄). The tubers form in the ridge, protected from light that turns them green. Covering with black plastic or a thick layer of compost is also accessible instead of ridging, but plastic is not sustainable and slugs (鼻涕虫) can multiply in compost.
Once the flowers are fully open, it is time to dig plants when the tubers are the size of a hen’s egg. They grow rapidly but gradually lose their juicy new potato flavour, so harvest freely.
1. What’s the writing purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To describe a magic process. |
| B．To recall a childhood memory. |
| C．To raise a potato-related topic. |
| D．To introduce a gardening award. |
| A．The closer the intervals are, the faster they will grow. |
| B．The warmer the weather is, the better they will grow. |
| C．The earlier they are planted, the healthier they will grow. |
| D．The deeper they are planted, the stronger they will grow. |
| A．Frost. | B．Plastic. | C．Ridges. | D．Slugs. |
| A．How to cook potatoes. | B．How to grow potatoes. |
| C．How to harvest potatoes. | D．How to preserve potatoes. |
10 . In a tiny, lab-grown garden, the first seeds ever sown in lunar dirt have come up. This small crop, planted in samples (样本) returned by Apollo tasks, offers hope that astronauts could someday grow their own food on the moon.
But plants planted in lunar dirt grew more slowly and were thinner than others grown in volcanic(火山的) material from Earth, researchers report 12 May in Communications Biology. That finding suggests that farming on the moon would take a lot more than a gardening skills.
“Ah! It’s so cool!” says a botanist (植物学家) Richard Barker. “Ever since these samples came, back, there’s been botanists that wanted to know what would happen if you grew plants in them,” says Barker, who wasn’t involved in the study. “But everyone knows those precious samples are priceless, and so you can understand why NASA was unwilling to publish them.”
The team planted seeds in tiny pots that each held about a gram of dirt. Four pots were filled with samples returned by Apollo 11, another four with Apollo 12 samples and a final four with dirt from Apollo 17. Another 16 pots were filled with earthly volcanic material used in past experiments to copy moon dirt. All were grown under LED lights in the lab and watered with nutrients.
“Nothing really compared to when we first saw the seedlings as they were coming up in the lunar dirt,” says Anna-Lisa Paul, a plant biologist. “That was a moving experience. We could not speak when we watched the very first plants growing in unique materials.”
Plants grew in all the pots of lunar dirt, but none grew as well as those planted in earthly material. “The healthiest ones were just smaller,” Paul says. The moon-grown plants were tiny. Faced with that, explorers need to do more research to let plants grow strongly on the moon. I believe we will succeed in time.
1. What does the research on plants grown in the lunar dirt show?| A．Growing foods on the moon is necessary. |
| B．Skills are the key to farming on the moon. |
| C．Farming’ on the moon needs many factors. |
| D．Astronauts want to grow food on their own. |
| A．Some plants need planting in special soils. |
| B．Botanists are interested in studying new things. |
| C．It is a selfish action for NASA to keep the secret. |
| D．The samples brought from the moon are valuable. |
| A．It is practical. | B．It is hopeful. |
| C．It only attracts astronauts. | D．It challenges most experts. |
| A．The First Plant Has Been Grown in Moon Dirt |
| B．Astronauts Have Brought Things Worth Spreading |
| C．Botanists Have Found a New Kind of Plant Lately |
| D．Farming on the Moon Has Been Accepted by People |
