A bean plant's life cycle

Plant a bean seed, give it what it needs, and watch it for about three months, noting every change. Your book shows its life cycle in stages, in this order:

• Stage I: the seed
• Stage II: the seed germinates
• Stage III: leaves appear
• Stage IV: flowers appear
• Stage V: fruits appear. A bean plant's fruit is a pod with seeds inside.
• After the fruits form, the plant dies.

But that is not the end. The seeds from the pod can be sown, and they grow into a new generation of bean plants. The whole journey from a seed to a plant, and on to the next generation of seeds, is the life cycle of a plant.

When a plant stops growing and all its life activities slowly come to an end, even though it has everything it needs, the plant is dead.