All living things face competition for resources. One way of dealing with this is to expand or migrate into new areas. But if you’re a plant, you have a problem – you can’t just pick up and move.

So plants expand their territories through their offspring, and they’ve got some ingenious ways of doing this.

Some plants use the wind for transportation. We’re all familiar with the dandelion seed. And how about the seed of this maple tree?

Other plant seeds float to a new location on streams and rivers.

And there are all sorts of ways for plant seeds to be carried to new locations by animals. Burs, like this puncturevine, get caught in fur.

Rodents often move seeds around in their efforts to store food. Birds eat berries and then deposit the seeds in a new location, along with a dose of fertilizer!

This plant is called carigana. Its seeds actually explode out of the fruit, landing as far as 30 feet away!

Some plants such as aspen expand their territory by starting new shoots off of old roots, allowing them to be one of the world’s largest living organisms.

Now that’s impressive! From the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service, I’m Zola Ryan.