Skip to content
Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words · Ann Arbor, MI

Why I love plants

Red leaf lettuce, mizuna mustard and green lettuce growing under pink-white LED lights in the Veggie plant growth hardware. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Plants" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.
Red leaf lettuce, mizuna mustard and green lettuce growing under pink-white LED lights in the Veggie plant growth hardware. NASA · Public domain
  • They eat light.
  • They move, just slowly.
  • They made the air I am breathing.

You can love plants in Ann Arbor.

What it really is

Plants build themselves out of air, water and sunlight.

Three things to try today

  1. Put one plant in a dark corner and one in the window.
  2. Wait a week.
  3. Say what is different and why.
NASA interns Jessica Scotten and Ayla Grandpre water young plants in the Veggie growth chamber at Kennedy Space Center. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Plants" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.
NASA interns Jessica Scotten and Ayla Grandpre water young plants in the Veggie growth chamber at Kennedy Space Center. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

A child in Ann Arbor, MI who loves plants is not unusual. A child in Ann Arbor, MI who is told that loving plants is unusual — that is the problem. The Ann Arbor, MI metro area has about 370,214 residents, ranking 153rd in the country.

Plants are made mostly of carbon taken from the air. Almost nobody expects that answer.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Ann Arbor, MI →

Love something else too

A pair of American bald eagles perched on the rim of their large stick nest on Kennedy Space Center property. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Birds" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love birdsA blacktip reef shark swims just under the sunlit surface, above a head of coral, at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Sharks" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love sharksAstronaut Mike Fincke reaches into the sealed Life Science Glovebox to run a biology experiment aboard the space station's Kibo module. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Biology" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love living thingsA test model of the long magnetometer boom for the Europa Clipper spacecraft laid out for checkout at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Magnets" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love magnetsTechnicians in clean-room gear install guidance, navigation and control electronics boxes into the Juno spacecraft. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Electronics" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love electronicsA technician sets up wiring and monitoring equipment at Launch Pad 39A for a shuttle tanking test. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Electricity" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love electricityTwo rocket engine tests fire at once on the test stands at Stennis Space Center, throwing huge white exhaust plumes into the air. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Energy" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love energyThe two-bladed Mod-1 wind turbine standing on its lattice tower on a hilltop at Boone, North Carolina. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Wind Power" page — read by families in Ann Arbor, MI.Why I love wind

Near Ann Arbor

Why I love plants, everywhere in the US · All things to love · STEM jobs you could do · Summer camps in Ann Arbor