This resource supports you to teach current plant science requirements for 14-16 and post-16 classes. We will guide you through accessible, low-budget plant material and their associated teaching topics. Plants are linked with their teaching topics and coded to exam board requirements to support you, and your lab technician, plan investigations that enable students to engage with plant life, while you keep to budget and cover course content. We have chosen plants and plant parts that can be accessed with little effort, are easily propagated, can be purchased from local shops, or found growing in school grounds. If you know what specification topic you are planning to teach and need support with plant material you can access these resources through a topic entry point.
Summaries are provided for each plant followed by individual plant profiles, which include information on teaching with these plants, caring for them (where applicable), costs, suppliers and links to relevant teaching resources.
Growing Further
If you want to build on your plant teaching and use a broader collection of plants, we have created a second section, Plant Stars, to help you go further. These plants are listed at the end of this page.
Plant stars to inspire your students
These plants are a little harder to source and more difficult to keep flourishing in the classroom, but their fascinating adaptations to habitats from around the world make them a valuable teaching tool for the biology lab.
Plant common name | Latin name | Key words | SAPS and Further Resources | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
Venus' Fly Trap | Dionaea muscipula | Adaptation Interdependence |
Using carnivorous plants in the classroom | |
![]() |
Cape Sundew |
Drosera capensis | Adaptation Interdependence |
Using carnivorous plants in the classroom | |
![]() |
Mimosa | Mimosa pudica | Plant responses | Investigating Thigmotropism | |
![]() |
Living Stones | Lithops spp | Adaptation Mimicry Xerophyte |
BBC DVD Private Life of Plants: Surviving | |
![]() |
Common Horsetail |
Equisetum arvense | Evolution ‘Living Fossils’ |
|
|
![]() |
Arabidopsis |
Arabidopsis thaliana | Genetics Variation Tropisms Inheritance Germination |
This resource was developed by Dawn Sanders of Gardens for Learning.