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Leaf base [ Botany ]

Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names

     
  The leaf base is the lowest  part of a leaf  lamina that is near the petiole.  
     
Leaves bases vary greatly from plant to plant and are useful in classification and identification. Bilateral symmetry is typical. However, when the leaf shows asymmetry at the base this is known as an oblique leaf base.

Terms dealing whit the shape of the base of a leaf:
  • Acuminate: Gradually narrowing at the base.
  • Acute: Becoming Gradually Pointed
  • Auriculate: with ear-lobe like appendages at the base
  • Cuneate or wedge shaped: Inversely triangular with the narrow part tapering toward the base.
  • Hastate: basal lobes pointing outward relative to the long axis of the blade
  • Obtuse: Rounded not pointed
  • Petiolate: with a petiole (three of the overview images)
  • Sagittate: Basal lobes pointed back toward the petiole - arrowhead shaped
  • Sessile: petiole reduced - the leaf blade appears to be attached to the stem
  • Subobtuse: Imperfectly or less than completely obtuse.
  • Truncate: Appearing to terminate abruptly, as if by cutting off.

 


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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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