Plant is collected by little girl (5)
I believe the answer is:
sisal
'plant' is the definition.
The answer is an example.
'is collected by little girl' is the wordplay.
'collected by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'little girl' becomes 'sal' (feminine given name. I am not sure about the 'little' bit.).
'is' put into 'sal' is 'SISAL'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sisal that I've seen before include "Agave yielding fibre" , "Fibre-yielding plant" , "Plant fibre used to make string" , "Plant yielding rope fibre" , "Strong rope fibre" .)