Chapter 5
TISSUES AND THE PRIMARY GROWTH OF STEMS
- Angiosperms – largest division in the plant kingdom
 Divisions:
o Dicots/broadleaf plants
o Monocots
- Two fundamental types of plant bodies:
 Primary plant body – herbaceous
 Secondary plant body – woody
BASIC TYPES OF CELLS AND TISSUES
Parenchyma
- Cells: have primary walls that remain thin
- Tissue: mass of parenchyma cells
- Most common type of cell and tissue
 Constitutes all soft parts of the plant
- Active metabolically and usually remain alive once they
mature
- Types of Parenchyma Cells:
 Chlorenchyma – involved in photosynthesis
o Chloroplasts are abundant
o Thin walls allow light and CO2 to pass through
the chloroplasts
 Permit pigments in the protoplasm to
be seen
 Glandular Cells – secrete nectar, fragrances, mucilage,
resins and oils.
o Contain a few chloroplasts but have elevated
amts of diotyosomes and ER
o Must transport large quantities of sugar and
minerals into themselves, transform them
metabolically, then transport the product out
 Transfer Cells – mediate short-distance transport of
materials
o increase surface area
o capable of large-scale molecular pumping
Collenchyma
- unevenly thick (most often thick in the corners)
- exhibits plasticity – ability to be deformed by pressure and to
retain the new shape even if the pressure of tension ceases
- present in elongating shoot tips
 layer just under the epidermis/bands located next to
vascular bundles
 makes tips stronger and more resistant to breaking
- can be stretched
- in stems: tendency for parenchyma to expand is
counterbalanced by the resistance of the collenchyma, and
the stem becomes rigid.
Sclerenchyma
o o
- both 1 and a thick 2 wall that is almost always lignified
- exhibits elasticity – can be deformed, but they snap back to
their original size and shape when pressure or tension is
released
- develop mainly in mature organs that have stopped growing
- strong enough to prevent the protoplast from expanding
- Types of Sclerenchyma Cells:
 Conducting – transport water (xylem)
 Mechanical
o Fibers – long and flexible
 Often found in areas where strength
and elasticity are impt
o Sclereids – short and more or less
isodiametric (cuboidal)
 Brittle and inflexible
 Masses of these form hard,
impenetrable surfaces
 Protects seed inside
- Living sclerenchyma cells – involved in storing starch or
calcium oxalate crystals
- Nutrients enter the cell through plasmodesmata
 Pits – emerges when wall deposition continues and
plasmodesmata is left uncovered
EXTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF CELLS
Stem Organization
- Nodes – where leaves are attached
- Internodes – regions between nodes
- Leaf Axil – stem area just above the point where the leaf
attaches
- Axillary bud – within the leaf axil
 Miniature shoot with a dormant apical meristem and
several young leaves
 Vegetative Bud
 Floral Bud
- Bud Scales – small, corky, waxy bud covering that protect
the delicate organs inside
- Terminal bud – extreme tip of each stem
Phyllotaxy
- Arrangement of leaves on the stem
- Kinds:
 Alternate – one leaf per node
 Opposite – two leaves per node
 Whorled – three or more leaves per node
- Orientation of leaves at one node wrt those at neighboring
nodes:
 Distichous – leaves are arranged in only two rows
o Alternate/opposite
 Decussate – leaves are arranged in four rows
o Opposite
 Spiral – each leaf is located slightly to the side of the
ones immediately above and below it
o Alternate/opposite/whorled
Modified
- Tendrils – modified leaves or lateral branches capable of
twining around small objects
 Provide support and attachments in some climbing
vines
- Stolons – long and thin internodes; leaves do not expand
 Also called runners
- Bulbs – short shoots that have thick, fleshy leaves
- Corms – vertical, thick stems that have thin, papery leaves
- Rhizomes – fleshy horizontal stems that allow a plant to
spread underground
- Tubers – horizontal like rhizomes but they only grow for a
short period
 Stores nutrients
** Storage shoots are subterranean
- Quiescence – means by wc perrenial plants of harsh
climates survive the stress of winter cold and summer heat
INTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS OF STEMS
Arrangement of Primary Tissues
Epiderms
- Outer layer of parenchyma cells
- Regulate the interchange of material between the plant and
its surroundings
- For protection
- Cutin – encrustment on outer walls
 Fatty substance that makes wall impermeable to H2O
  Forms a layer called the cuticle
- Wax – can also be present outside
 Makes it difficult and unrewarding for an insect to chew
on the stem
- Stoma – permit CO2 to enter the plant
- Trichomes – hairs. Outgrowths of the epidermis
 Protection
Cortex
- Interior to the epidermis
- Composed of photosynthetic parenchyma and sometimes
collenchyma
- In fleshy stems: cortex parenchyma is aerenchyma – an
open tissue with large intercellular spaces
Vascular Tissues
Two types of Vascular Tissues:
- Xylem – conducts H2O and minerals
 Tracheary Elements:
o Tracheids
 Obtain H2O from tracheids below them
 Must occur in groups
 Pit-pair – aligned set of pits
 Pit membrane – set of primary walls
and middle lamella between them
 found in all plants with vascular tissues
and almost all nonangiosperms
o Vessel Elements

o
Individual cells that produce 1 and 2
o o cells around them continue to grow and
walls before they die
 Perforation – provide pathway with
little friction
 Must be aligned
 2 perforations per element
 Vessel – stack of vessel elements
 must absorb H2O from other
cells and pass it on
 side walls have pits for
 found in angiosperms
 Types of Tracheary Elements:
For wet soil:
o occurring in some cells
o Annular thickening – small amt of 2 wall
 high H2O movement, weak
o
o Helical thickening - 2 wall exists as one or
o
two helices interior to the 1 wall
For dry soil:
o
o Scalariform thickening - 2 wall covers most
o
of the inner surface of 1 wall and is fairly
extensive
o
o Reticulate thickening - 2 wall is deposited in
the shape of a net
o Circular bordered pits – most derived and
strongest

o
Virtually all the 1 wall is covered by
o
the 2 wall
 More force req’d to move H2O
- Phloem – distributes sugar and minerals
 Must remain alive in order to conduct -> parenchyma
 Sieve pores – enlarged plasmodesmata
 Sieve areas – groups of sieve pores clustered together
 Sieve elements:
o Sieve cells – elongated, spindle shaped, and
has sieve areas all over
 Nonangiosperm vascular plants
 Albuminous cells – nuclear control
o Sieve tube members – stacked end to end
with their large sieve areas alive
 Forms sieve tube
 Angiosperms
 Companion cells – provide nuclear
control
 Aid sugars into and out of the
sieve tube members
Vascular Bundles
- Located just interior to the cortex
- Dicots: arranged in one ring surrounding the pith, a region of
parenchyma similar to the cortex
- Monocots: distributed as a complex system throughout the
inner part of the stem
 Between bundles: parenchyma
 “scattered”
- Collateral – each contains both xylem and phloem strands
running parallel to each other
- Primary Xylem – VB xylem
- Primary Phloem – VB phloem
- Inner tracheary elements are smaller than the outer ones
STEM GROWTH AND DIFFERENTIATION
- Shoot Apical Meristem – region where stems grow longer
by creating new cells at their tips
 Lower cells = young stem
- Subapical Meristem – region below the apical meristem
 Certain cells stop dividing and start elongating and
differentiating into the first tracheary elements
 Protoxylem – first xylem to appear
expand, then they differentiate, making them
larger
 Metaxylem – largest tracheary
elements
o
any type of 2 wall is feasible
o
o Have annular or helical 2 walls
 Protophloem – exterior cells that matured
o Outer part of vascular bundle
o Extremely short-lived
 Never become well differentiated
o Metaphloem – cells closes to the metaxylem
 Smaller because cell division is
st
 Trichomes: 1 stage – youngest internodes (closest to
the AM)
 Cuticle: thin – AM, thick – subapical region
 Pith: cells enlarge somewhat, intercellular spaces
expand but remain small, and cell walls continue to be
thin and unmodified
 Cortex: plastids develop into chloroplasts
 Components:
o Protoderm – epidermal cells that are still
meristematic and in the early stages of
differentiation
o Provascular tissues – young xylem and
phloem
o Ground meristem – young pith and cortex