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Seedling  [ Botany - Horticulture ]

Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names

 
     
  A juvenile plant grown from a seed.  
     
A seedling is young plant just after germination, and represents the next growth phase of the leaves after the cotyledons. The term seedling is also used more loosely to indicate any baby plant formed from a seed rather than from a sprout, cutting or other forms of vegetative propagation, which has not yet attained flowering size. A nursery grown plant which has not been lifted and replanted in the nursery (see transplant). A seedling may be several years old before it flowers.
In forestry the term usually used to refer to young trees grown from seed, from germination ( the stage where they have just emerged from the soil) to the sapling stage (young tree with single unbranched stem)


Left: A dicotyledonous seedling

     

 


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Holdfast roots  [ Botany  ]

Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names

 
     
  Some species of climbing plants develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place.  
     
Climbing plants, like the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata), and trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans),  develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place. Usually the Holdfast roots die at the end of the first season, but in some species they are perennial. In the tropics some of the large climbing plants have hold-fast roots by which they attach themselves, and long, cord-like roots that extend downward through the air and may lengthen and branch for several years until they strike the soil and become absorbent roots.

Major references and further lectures:
1) E. N. Transeau “General Botany” Discovery Publishing House, 1994
     

 

 

 

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