Q.In a forest, if the bark of a tree is damaged by the horn of a deer, How will the plant overcome the damage?

Step 1. Recognise what damage to bark exposes. Bark - the periderm together with the cortex and phloem outside the vascular cambium - is the tree's protective covering; when a deer's horn tears through it, the living tissues beneath (cortex, phloem, and potentially the cambium) are left exposed to water loss, desiccation, and invasion by fungi or insects.

Step 2. Recall how the periderm itself is formed. The chapter explains that phellogen (cork cambium) can arise from several different tissues depending on the situation - epidermis, cortex, phloem or pericycle - because it is not a fixed, permanently located layer but a meristem that differentiates wherever conditions call for it.

Step 3. Apply this to a wound. At the margin of the wound, living parenchyma cells in the exposed tissue (typically in the cortex or phloem near the injury) become meristematic again and differentiate into a new, localised phellogen - a wound periderm - which then cuts off new phellem (cork) outward, exactly as an ordinary periderm does. …

Recall that phellogen can differentiate afresh from nearby living tissue wherever needed, and apply th …

• Assuming the original epidermis/bark simply regrows unchanged, rather than recognising that a NEW periderm differentiates specifically at the wound. …