SAT Reading & Writing · Central Ideas and Details
A botanist studying alpine plants notes that several species open their flowers only during a narrow part of the day. On cold mornings,…
A botanist studying alpine plants notes that several species open their flowers only during a narrow part of the day. On cold mornings, opening is delayed until pollinating insects become active; on unusually warm days, flowers may close earlier as tissues lose water. The timing therefore varies with conditions instead of following a fixed clock.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Answer and explanation
Answer: D: The timing of flower opening in some alpine plants responds to environmental conditions that also affect pollinators and water loss.
The passage gives two environmental reasons the opening period can shift, temperature-linked pollinator activity and water loss. D captures that central relationship without adding a claim the text does not make.
More Central Ideas and Details questions
- Question 3A historian examining merchant correspondence from an eighteenth-century port found repeated…
- Question 9In a poem, the speaker describes repairing a watch inherited from a parent. Each time the watch…
- Question 27A museum placed short labels beside several abstract paintings. Visitors who read the labels spent…
- Question 36When a city library eliminated overdue fines for children’s books, the number of long-overdue…
- Question 59In a nineteenth-century novel, a young clerk repeatedly walks past an expensive restaurant on his…
- Question 60In a short story, an elderly woman keeps a cracked blue bowl on the highest shelf in her kitchen…
Learn the method behind questions like this one
The SAT Reading & Writing course teaches each tested skill through lessons, step-by-step solutions to sample problems, the complete study guide and full-length practice tests.