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A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves , flowers and fruits , transports water and dissolved substances between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem , engages in photosynthesis, stores nutrients, and produces new living tissue. [ 1 ]
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Some plants have rhizomes that grow above ground or that lie at the soil surface, including some Iris species as well as ferns, whose spreading stems are rhizomes. Plants with underground rhizomes include gingers, bamboo, snake plant, the Venus flytrap, Chinese lantern, western poison-oak, [13] hops, and Alstroemeria, and some grasses, such as ...
There are also many wild edible plant stems. In North America, these include the shoots of woodsorrel (usually eaten along with the leaves), chickweeds, galinsoga, common purslane, Japanese knotweed, winter cress and other wild mustards, thistles (de-thorned), stinging nettles (cooked), bellworts, violets, amaranth and slippery elm, among many others.
A geophyte (earth+plant) is a plant with an underground storage organ including true bulbs, corms, tubers, tuberous roots, enlarged hypocotyls, and rhizomes. Most plants with underground stems are geophytes but not all plants that are geophytes have underground stems. Geophytes are often physiologically active even when they lack leaves.
One odd group of vining plants is the fern genus Lygodium, called climbing ferns. [10] The stem does not climb, but rather the fronds (leaves) do. The fronds unroll from the tip, and theoretically never stop growing; they can form thickets as they unroll over other plants, rockfaces, and fences.
The bulb's leaf bases, also known as scales, generally do not support leaves, but contain food reserves to enable the plant to survive adverse conditions. At the center of the bulb is a vegetative growing point or an unexpanded flowering shoot. The base is formed by a reduced stem, and plant growth occurs from this basal plate.
In stem tubers the order is reversed, with the distal end producing stems. Tuberous roots are biennial in duration: the plant produces tubers the first year, and at the end of the growing season, the shoots often die, leaving the newly generated tubers; the next growing season, the tubers produce new shoots.