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Sclerenchyma fibers are of great economic importance, since they constitute the source material for many fabrics (e.g. flax, hemp, jute, and ramie). Unlike the collenchyma, mature sclerenchyma is composed of dead cells with extremely thick cell walls ( secondary walls ) that make up to 90% of the whole cell volume.
Vascular bundles are present throughout the monocot stem, although concentrated towards the outside. This differs from the dicot stem that has a ring of vascular bundles and often none in the center. The shoot apex in monocot stems is more elongated. Leaf sheathes grow up around it, protecting it. This is true to some extent of almost all monocots.
The cambium present between primary xylem and primary phloem is called the intrafascicular cambium (within vascular bundles). During secondary growth, cells of medullary rays, in a line (as seen in section; in three dimensions, it is a sheet) between neighbouring vascular bundles, become meristematic and form new interfascicular cambium ...
Despite this, only three families of monocots use C 4 carbon fixation compared to 15 dicot families. Of the monocot clades containing C 4 plants, the grass ( Poaceae ) species use the C 4 photosynthetic pathway most. 46% of grasses are C 4 and together account for 61% of C 4 species.
In monocots, the tunica determines the physical characteristics of the leaf edge and margin. In dicots, layer two of the corpus determines the characteristics of the edge of the leaf. The corpus and tunica play a critical part of the plant physical appearance as all plant cells are formed from the meristems.
The rhytidome is the most familiar part of bark, being the outer layer that covers the trunks of trees. It is composed mostly of dead cells and is produced by the formation of multiple layers of suberized periderm, cortical and phloem tissue. [33] The rhytidome is especially well developed in older stems and roots of trees.
While new pith growth is usually white or pale in color, as the tissue ages it commonly darkens to a deeper brown color. In trees pith is generally present in young growth, but in the trunk and older branches the pith often gets replaced – in great part – by xylem. In some plants, the pith in the middle of the stem may dry out and ...
Over the past century, there has been a great deal of research regarding the mechanism of xylem sap transport; today, most plant scientists continue to agree that the cohesion-tension theory best explains this process, but multiforce theories that hypothesize several alternative mechanisms have been suggested, including longitudinal cellular ...