A herbaceous plant (in botanical Botany, plant science, phytology, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines concerned with the study of plants, algae and fungi, including structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, chemical properties, and evolutionary use simply herb) is a plant Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The scientific study of plants, known as botany, has identified about 350,000 extant species of plants, defined as seed plants, bryophytes, ferns and fern allies. As of 2004, that has leaves In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin. As an evolutionary trait, the flatness of leaves works to expose the chloroplasts to more light and to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide at the expense of water loss. In the Devonian period, when carbon and stems A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaves, inflorescence , cones or other stems etc. The internodes distance one node from another. The term shoots is often confused with stems; shoots generally refer to new fresh that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground.[1] A herbaceous plant may be annual An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed. Some seedless plants can also be considered annuals even though they do not grow a flower, biennial A biennial plant is a flowering plant that takes two years to complete its biological lifecycle. In the first year the plant grows leaves, stems, and roots , then it enters a period of dormancy over the colder months. Usually the stem remains very short and the leaves are low to the ground, forming a rosette. Many biennials require a cold or perennial A perennial plant or perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. When used by gardeners or horticulturalists, applies specifically to winter hardy perennial herbaceous plants. Scientifically, woody plants like shrubs and trees are also perennial in their habit.
Annual herbaceous plants die completely at the end of the growing season or when they have flowered and fruited, and they then grow again from seed.[2]
Herbaceous perennial A perennial plant or perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. When used by gardeners or horticulturalists, perennial applies specifically to winter hardy herbaceous plants. Scientifically, woody plants like shrubs and trees are also perennial and biennial plants A biennial plant is a flowering plant that takes two years to complete its biological lifecycle. In the first year the plant grows leaves, stems, and roots , then it enters a period of dormancy over the colder months. Usually the stem remains very short and the leaves are low to the ground, forming a rosette. Many biennials require a cold have stems A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaves, inflorescence , cones or other stems etc. The internodes distance one node from another. The term shoots is often confused with stems; shoots generally refer to new fresh that die at the end of the growing season, but parts of the plant survive under or close to the ground from season to season (for biennials, until the next growing season, when they flower and die). New growth develops from living tissues remaining on or under the ground, including roots In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating (growing up above the ground or especially above water). Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either (see rhizome). So, it is, a caudex (a thickened portion of the stem at ground level) or various types of underground stems, such as bulbs A bulb is a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf bases. The leaves often function as food storage organs during dormancy, corms A corm is a short, vertical, swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ used by some plants to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat (estivation). A corm consists of one or more internodes with at least one growing point, with protective leaves modified into skins or tunics. The thin tunic, stolons In biology, stolons are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external skeletons, rhizomes In botany, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes may also be referred to as creeping rootstalks, or rootstocks and tubers Tubers are various types of modified plant structures that are enlarged to store nutrients. They are used by plants to survive the winter or dry months and provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing season and they are a means of asexual reproduction. Two different groups of tubers are: stem tubers, and root tubers. Examples of herbaceous biennials include carrot The carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus, Etymology: Middle French carotte, from Late Latin carōta, from Greek καρότον karōton, originally from the Indo-European root ker- , due to its horn-like shape) is a root vegetable, usually orange in colour, though purple, red, white, or yellow varieties exist. It has a crisp texture when fresh, parsnip The parsnip is a root vegetable related to the carrot. Parsnips resemble carrots, but are paler than most carrots and have a stronger flavor. Like carrots, parsnips are native to Eurasia and have been eaten there since ancient times. Zohary and Hopf note that the archeological evidence for the cultivation of the parsnip is “still rather limited, and common ragwort Ragwort is a very common wild flower in the family Asteraceae that is native to northern Eurasia, usually in dry, open places, and has also been widely distributed as a weed elsewhere; herbaceous perennials include peony Peony or paeony is a name for plants in the genus Paeonia, the only genus in the flowering plant family Paeoniaceae. They are native to Asia, southern Europe and western North America. Boundaries between species are not clear and estimates of the number of species range from 25 to 40, hosta Hosta is a genus of about 23–45 species of lily-like plants native to northeast Asia. They were once classified in the Liliaceae but are now included in the Agavaceae by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, although some taxonomists place the Hostas in their own family: Hostaceae. The scientific name is also used as the common name; in the past they, mint Mentha is a genus of about 25 species (and many hundreds of varieties) of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae (Mint Family). Species within Mentha have a subcosmopolitan distribution across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North America. Several mint hybrids commonly occur, most ferns A fern is any one of a group of about 12,000 species of plants. Unlike mosses, they have xylem and phloem . They have stems, leaves, and roots like other vascular plants. Ferns do not have either seeds or flowers (they reproduce via spores) and most grasses Poaceae is a family in the Class Liliopsida (the monocots) of the flowering plants. Plants of this family are usually called grasses, or, to distinguish them from other graminoids, true grasses; the shrub- or tree-like plants in this family are called bamboo (there are also herbaceous, non-woody bamboos). There are about 600 genera and some 9,000. By contrast, non-herbaceous perennial plants are woody plants A woody plant is a plant that uses wood as its structural tissue. They are typically perennial plants that have their stems and larger roots reinforced with wood produced adjacent to the vascular tissues: typically the main stem and larger branches and roots are covered by a layer of thickened bark. Woody plants are usually either trees, shrubs, which have stems above ground that remain alive during the dormant season and grow shoots the next year from the above-ground parts – these include trees A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to 6 m; some authors set a minimum of 10 cm trunk diameter, shrubs A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, usually less than 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants can be either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience. Small, low shrubs such as lavender, periwinkle and thyme are often termed subshrubs and vines A vine in the broad sense refers to any climbing or trailing plant. The narrower and original meaning is the grapevine (Vitis).
Some relatively fast-growing herbaceous plants (especially annuals) are pioneers Pioneer species are species which colonize previously uncolonized land, usually leading to ecological succession. Pioneer Species are the first organisms to start the chain of events leading to a livible biosphere or ecosystem.Since uncolonized land may have thin, poor quality soils with few nutrients, pioneer species are often hearty plants with, or early-successional species. Others form the main vegetation of many stable habitats, occurring for example in the ground layer of forests A forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on the various criteria. These plant communities cover approximately 9.4% of the Earth's surface (or 30% of total land area), though they once covered much more (about 50% of total land area), in many different regions and function as habitats for, or in naturally open habitats A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism. It is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds (influences and is utilized by) a species population.[citation needed] such as meadow A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants . It may be cut for hay or grazed by livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats, salt marsh A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salty or brackish water, dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh in trapping and binding sediments. Salt marshes play a large or desert A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. In the Köppen.
Some herbaceous plants can grow rather large, such as the Musa genus Musa is one of three genera in the family Musaceae; it includes bananas and plantains. There are over 50 species of Musa with a broad variety of uses. The word "banana" came via Portuguese or Spanish from a West African language (possibly Wolof) circa 1597 and has since found its way into most Western languages. The scientific name for, to which the banana Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to soft, sweet "dessert" bananas. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, belongs.
References
- ^ Gray's Manual of Botany, American Book Co. 1889
- ^ Levine, Carol. 1995. A guide to wildflowers in winter: herbaceous plants of northeastern North America. New Haven: Yale University Press. page 1.
See also
- Herb In American English the initial "h" is normally silent: /ˈɜrb/.[Full citation needed] In standard British English the "h" is pronounced: /ˈhɜːb/ Also see American and British English pronunciation differences. In Canada, it is pronounced either with or without the "h"
- Herbaceous stems Herbaceous stems are plant structures that have been modified to serve the same function as leaves and occur in a number of different plant groups including Cactaceae and Euphorbiaceae. In this context, herbaceous is a descriptive term for the morphological appearance of parts of a plant, typically used when structures look and act like leaves
- Woody plant A woody plant is a plant that uses wood as its structural tissue. They are typically perennial plants that have their stems and larger roots reinforced with wood produced adjacent to the vascular tissues: typically the main stem and larger branches and roots are covered by a layer of thickened bark. Woody plants are usually either trees, shrubs,
- Forb Forbs are herbaceous flowering plants that are not graminoids . The term is frequently used in biology and in vegetation ecology, especially in relation to grasslands. Forbs represent a guild of plant species with broadly similar growth form, which in ecology is often more important than taxonomic relationship
- Graminoid Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges (Cyperaceae) and the rushes (Juncaceae). The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns (turf) and grassland
Categories: Plant morphology Plant morphology is the field in botany that studies the diversity in forms, with the naked eye or slight optical magnification. This is opposed to plant anatomy that needs to cut into plants to be able to study its subject, usually with a microscope
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