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A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves , flowers and fruits , transports water and dissolved substances between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem , engages in photosynthesis, stores nutrients, and produces new living tissue. [ 1 ]
Some plants have bracts that subtend the inflorescence, where the flowers are on branched stalks; the bracts are not connected to the stalks holding the flowers, but are adnate or attached to the main stem (Adnate describes the fusing together of different unrelated parts. When the parts fused together are the same, they are connately joined.)
There are also many wild edible plant stems. In North America, these include the shoots of woodsorrel (usually eaten along with the leaves), chickweeds, galinsoga, common purslane, Japanese knotweed, winter cress and other wild mustards, thistles (de-thorned), stinging nettles (cooked), bellworts, violets, amaranth and slippery elm, among many others.
Most plants have an epidermis that is a single cell layer thick. Some plants like Ficus elastica and Peperomia, which have a periclinal cellular division within the protoderm of the leaves, have an epidermis with multiple cell layers. Epidermal cells are tightly linked to each other and provide mechanical strength and protection to the plant.
In the spring, perennial plant shoots are the new growth that grows from the ground in herbaceous plants or the new stem or flower growth that grows on woody plants. In everyday speech, shoots are often synonymous with stems. Stems, which are an integral component of shoots, provide an axis for buds, fruits, and leaves.
Most plants are non-succulent; i.e. having no fleshy stems or leaves. The nodes on the stem are swollen. The leaves are almost always opposite, [7] rarely whorled. The blades are entire, petiolate, and often stipulate. These stipules are not sheath-forming. The bisexual flowers are terminal, blooming singly or branched or forked in cymes.
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Dicotyledon plantlet Young castor oil plant showing its prominent two embryonic leaves (), which differ from the adult leaves. The dicotyledons, also known as dicots (or, more rarely, dicotyls), [2] are one of the two groups into which all the flowering plants (angiosperms) were formerly divided.