How2Day: Small Parts of Wild Plants

Wild plants can be anything from the smallest non-vascular grass-like growth to a sky scraping redwood tree. This panorama of species and sizes means that there are very few universally small plant parts. A stem could be two inches long in one plant and many feet long on another. However, there are some plant parts, such as seeds, that are small across the board. These parts are components of certain species and are not present on all wild plants.

Seeds are the reproductive means of all spermatophyte plants. They are among the smallest of plant parts. The two major categories of seed plants are gymnosperms, or conifers, and angiosperms, or flowering plants. Conifers are all plants that produce cones. Seeds are mature and fertilized ovules, the plant equivalent of a fertilized human egg. There are approximately 250,750 species of seed producing plants in the world, most of which naturally occur in the wild. A number of plant seeds like pumpkin and sunflower are used as snack foods and give a good indication as to how large--or, small--seeds are.

Flowering wild plants have relatively small reproductive organs. Asexually reproducing plants are those with both male and female sexual organs. Sexually producing plants are species in which a plant has either male or female reproductive organs. Insects and birds pollinate these plants. Sexual organs on plants include the pistil, stamen, ovule, stigma, style, filament and receptacle. All of these organs must be small enough to fit inside the bowl formed by a flowers petals. They are generally no more than a few inches long.

Nodes are joints on the stems of plants that add both strength and flexibility to the plant. They occur commonly on stemmed wild plants and are very small. Nodes function on plant stems in much the same way that knuckles do on human fingers, and they are appropriately proportioned. The size of a node is dependent upon the length of a plant's stem. Nodes on mature wild bamboo are larger than those on small flowering plants, though they are still only a fraction of an inch tall. Nodes run the full width of a plant. Thus, on plants such as bamboo, a node may have a fractional height measurement but a large diameter and circumference.

Xylem and phloem are components of all vascular plants. Wild vascular plants are any that produce seeds, fruit, cones, or have the capacity to produce organs such as root systems. Both xylem and phloem are microscopic parts invisible to the naked eye. They are essential to plant health. Xylem are cells that transport water and minerals from plant roots to leaves. Phloem cells transport food create through the process of photosynthesis from leaves to the rest of a plant's body.

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