Growth in Plants & Animals-Plant Morphology

The examination of a plant’s physical shape and exterior structure is referred to as phytomorphology.  This is often distinguished from plant anatomy, which is the study of a plant’s internal structure, particularly at the microscopic level. The visual identification of plants is aided by plant shape. 

Define Plant Morphology:

Plant morphology is described as “the study of the development, form, and shape of plants, in addition to an attempt to interpret those on the basis of plant and origin similarities.” To begin, morphology is comparative, which suggests that a morphologist analyses characteristics in a variety of plants from the same or different species, compares them, and forms conclusions about their commonalities. Homologous structures are those that are thought to exist and develop as a result of shared, inherited genetic processes in different species.

Pine, oak, and cabbage leaves, for example, have radically distinct appearances but share similar underlying structures and parts groupings, It’s simple to deduce that leaves are homologous. The plant morphologist goes on to say that cactus spines have the same basic structure and growth as leaves in other plants, implying that cactus spines are likewise homologous to leaves. 

Vegetative and reproductive characteristics of morphology: 

Plant morphology is concerned with both the vegetative and reproductive structures of plants.

Vascular plants have two basic organ systems in their vegetative (somatic) structures: (1) a shoot system, which consists of stems and leaves, and (2) a root system. These two systems are found in nearly all vascular plants and serve as a unifying theme for plant morphology research.

Reproductive structures, on the other hand, are diverse and usually unique to a single plant group. Flowers and fruits are found only in angiosperms; sori are found only in ferns, and seed cones are found only in conifers and other gymnosperms. As a result, reproductive traits are seen to be more valuable for plant classification than vegetative characters.

Morphology in development:

Plant development refers to the process by which a plant’s structures emerge and mature as it grows. It is a subject that is researched in plant anatomy, physiology, and morphology.

Plant development differs significantly from that of vertebrate animals. When an animal embryo begins to develop, it produces all of the bodily components that it will have throughout its life at a very early stage. When an animal is born (or hatches from its egg), it has all of its physical components and will only grow larger and more mature from that point forward. Plants, on the other hand, continuously develop new tissues and structures from meristems positioned at the tips of organs or between mature tissues throughout their lives, thus a living plant always has embryonic tissues.

“The combination of multiple tissues and functions into a multicellular organism provides not only the character qualities of the clearly different parts and processes but also an entirely new set of characteristics that would not have been predictable based on inspection of the component pieces,” the author continues. To put it another way, knowing all there is to know about a plant’s molecules isn’t enough to predict the characteristics of its cells, and knowing everything there is to understand about cells isn’t enough to predict everything there is to know about a plant’s structure.

Morphological variation:

Natural variety in form and structure can be found in plants. While all organisms differ from one another, plants have an additional sort of variation. Parts that are repeated within a single individual may differ in form and structure from other similar parts. The leaves of a plant display the most variation, although other organs such as stems and flowers may also show variation. Positional effects, environmental influences, and juvenility are the three main sources of this difference.

Evolution of plant morphology:

In-plant morphogenesis and evolution, transcription factors and transcriptional regulatory networks play critical roles. Many new transcription factor families arose during plant landing, and they are selectively wired into the networks of multicellular growth, reproduction, and organ development, leading to terrestrial plants’ more sophisticated morphogenesis.

Conclusion:

We learned about the definition, characteristics, and other aspects like the importance of plant morphology in this article.  The roots, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruits are the common morphological parts of higher plants.