Structure Of The Leaf | Plant | Biology | The FuseSchool

Plants make food through photosynthesis. Using their leaves, plants combine sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to make glucose and oxygen. A leaf is like a plant's food factory, collecting all of the components into one place so that photosynthesis can happen. Let's start with sunlight. The top of a leaf is exposed to the most sunlight, and so the cells specialised for trapping light are on top of the leaf. These specialised cells are called palisade mesophyll cells. They are packed full of chlorophyll - the green chemical that plants used to absorb light. Most leaves have a large surface area so that they can trap as much sunlight as possible. Moving onto carbon dioxide. This is where the bottom of the leaf comes in. There are little pores on the bottom of the leaf called stomata. The stomata open up so that carbon dioxide can diffuse into the leaf. The stomata are controlled by 'sausage shaped' guard cells, which open up to let carbon dioxide in. The guard cells can also close