NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 10 Projects and further exploration — Learning further

Book page 205 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Make a field trip to a local garden. Interact with a gardener to learn about various conditions and the time required for the growth of various plants.

Answer

What to do: visit a nursery, a park or your school garden with your teacher. Carry a notebook and prepare your questions before you go — a gardener is busy, and good questions get good answers.

Questions worth asking:

Which plants do you sow from seed, and which from cuttings?
How long after sowing does each one come up? When does it flower?
How often do you water it, and does that change with the season?
Which plants need full sun and which need shade?
What manure do you add, and when?
Which insects trouble the plants, and what do you do about them?

Record your findings in a table like this.

Plant	Grown from	Days to germinate	Sunlight	Watering	Days to first flower / harvest
Marigold (genda)	Seed	5–8 days	Full sun	Daily in summer	about 50 days
Coriander (dhaniya)	Split seed	8–12 days	Partial sun	Light, daily	30–40 days to cut
Tulsi	Seed or cutting	7–14 days	Full sun	Alternate days	about 3 months
Money plant	Cutting	Roots in 10–15 days	Shade	Keep soil moist	Rarely flowers indoors
Rose	Cutting / grafted plant	—	Full sun (4–6 hours)	Alternate days	45–60 days after pruning

Tip: ask the gardener one “why” question too — for example, “why do you press the soil down after sowing?” The answer (to remove big air gaps so the seed touches moist soil) connects the garden directly to Activity 10.2.

Q2.

Can we grow plants without germinating their seeds? Explore and cite some examples.

Answer

Yes. Many plants can be grown from a piece of the parent plant instead of from a seed. This is called vegetative propagation, and gardeners and farmers use it every day.

Part used	Examples	How it is done
Stem cutting	Rose, hibiscus (gudhal), money plant, sugarcane, bougainvillea, tulsi	A piece of stem with two or three buds is planted in moist soil; roots grow from the buried end
Leaf	Bryophyllum (patharchatta), sansevieria (snake plant), begonia	Buds sprout from the notches on the leaf margin and grow into new plants
Underground stem / tuber	Potato, ginger (adrak), turmeric (haldi), colocasia (arbi)	Pieces bearing “eyes” or buds are buried and sprout
Bulb	Onion, garlic	A clove or bulb planted in soil grows into a new plant
Root	Sweet potato (shakarkandi), dahlia	Buds on the swollen root grow into shoots
Runner / sucker	Grass, strawberry, banana, mint (pudina)	Side shoots creep out, root at the joints and become separate plants
Grafting and layering	Mango, guava, litchi, lemon	A shoot of a good variety is joined to a strong rooted stem, or a branch is made to root while still attached

Why gardeners prefer this for some plants: a plant grown from a cutting is an exact copy of its parent, so a sweet mango gives sweet mangoes. It also fruits much sooner — a grafted mango bears in three or four years, a seed-grown one may take eight or more. Seeds, on the other hand, are cheap, easy to store and easy to carry.

Try This: stand a piece of money plant with one node in a bottle of water on the window sill. Change the water twice a week. In about ten days you will see white roots appear at the node — a new plant, and not a seed in sight.

Q3.

Observe the life cycle of five plants grown at home, school, or in a nearby garden. Create a picture book containing pictures of various stages of their growth. Write the name of each plant and the duration of each of its stage.

Answer

How to make the picture book:

Choose five fast-growing plants so that you can finish in one season — moong, gram, coriander, marigold and mustard are good choices.
Give each plant a double page. Write its name at the top and the date of sowing.
Draw or photograph it at five fixed stages: seed, germination, first leaves, flowering, fruit or seed formation.
Write the date and the number of days from sowing beside every picture. That is what turns a set of drawings into a record.
On the last page, put all five plants in one comparison table.

Plant	Germination	First true leaves	First flower	Fruit / seeds
Moong	Day 2–3	Day 6–8	Day 30–35	Day 55–65
Gram (chana)	Day 4–6	Day 9–12	Day 45–55	Day 90–110
Coriander	Day 8–12	Day 15–18	Day 45–55	Day 80–90
Marigold	Day 5–8	Day 12–15	Day 45–60	Day 75–90
Mustard (sarson)	Day 3–5	Day 8–10	Day 40–50	Day 85–100

Tip: keep a scale or a coin beside the plant in every photograph. Then the pictures show not only the shape of each stage but also how much the plant has grown between them.

Q4.

Try to observe some of the stages in the life cycle of a butterfly or a moth. Are these stages similar to the stages in the life cycle of a mosquito?

Answer

Yes — the stages are exactly the same four, though they are passed on land instead of in water.

Stage	Butterfly	Mosquito
Egg	Laid on the underside of a leaf — look on lemon, curry-leaf and calotropis (aak) plants	Laid on or near stagnant water
Larva	Caterpillar — eats leaves greedily and grows fast	Wriggler in water — feeds and grows
Pupa	Chrysalis or cocoon, hanging still from a twig; does not feed	Comma-shaped pupa in water; does not feed
Adult	Winged butterfly that flies and feeds on nectar	Winged mosquito; the female sucks blood

Where they differ: the butterfly's larva and pupa live on land, on a plant; the mosquito's live in water. A butterfly's whole cycle takes about a month, a mosquito's only a week or two.

Did you know? The silk moth also passes through four life stages — egg, larva, pupa and adult. The larvae secrete a thread-like material which they wrap around themselves before changing to pupae, and these are the fibres used to make silk fabric. In India, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has set up several centres for silk production.

The general pattern: a great many insects follow the same egg → larva → pupa → adult path. The larva is the eating-and-growing stage, the pupa is the rebuilding stage, and the adult is the flying-and-reproducing stage.

Q5.

In your opinion, would the environment affect the life cycles of insects? Explore and list the factors that affect the life cycles of insects.

Answer

Yes, very strongly. The same insect completes its cycle much faster in one season than in another, and may not complete it at all in a bad year.

Factor	Effect on the life cycle	Something you can observe
Temperature	Warmth speeds up every stage; cold slows it down or stops it	Mosquitoes are everywhere in the rains and few in a north-Indian December
Water / humidity	Mosquito eggs, larvae and pupae simply cannot develop without standing water	Cases of dengue rise a few weeks after the monsoon begins
Availability of food	A caterpillar that runs out of leaves grows slowly, stays small or dies	Caterpillars are found on a lemon plant only while it has fresh leaves
Light and day length	Decides when many insects emerge, mate and rest for the season	Moths swarm around a tube light at night
Predators	Frogs, lizards, birds, spiders and fish eat eggs and larvae, so fewer reach adulthood	Guppy fish kept in a tank keep it free of larvae
Human activity	Insecticides, spraying kerosene, draining water and clearing rubbish break the cycle; open drains and garbage help it	A weekly “dry day” at home cuts down mosquitoes noticeably
Pollution	Dirty water and polluted air kill some insects and favour others	Certain mosquitoes breed happily in polluted drains

Why this matters to us: if the environment controls the life cycle, then changing the environment is the best way to control the insect. That is exactly what emptying a cooler, spraying kerosene or keeping guppy fish is doing — you are not chasing mosquitoes, you are removing the conditions their life cycle needs.

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