Think about a petal plucked from its flower. When the petal is removed from the flower, will it remain alive according to

the characteristics of life? Why or why not?

When a petal is plucked from a flower, it will not remain alive for very long. It will soon start to decompose.

Explanation:

To understand this, we need to go back to the act of plucking the flower as such from the plant. The moment a flower is plucked from a plant, it stops receiving any further nutrition from the plant. Whatever nutrients were present in the flower at the time of plucking it will continue to keep it alive and once those nutrients are used up, the flower will start to decompose.

In this case, since the petal is plucked from a flower which already was surviving on limited nutrients, it will decompose very quickly.

According to the characteristics of life, it cannot be considered dead at the time it's plucked. It continues to live, but for a very brief time.