Ch 5Morphology of Flowering Plants — Class 11 Biology, concept-first.

The root is, in most flowering plants, the underground, non-green organ that develops directly from the radicle of the germinating seed and grows down into the soil, away from light and towards moistu…

The stem is the ascending, usually above-ground part of the plant axis, developing from the plumule of the embryo, and is distinguished from the root by bearing nodes -- the points where leaves, branc…

The leaf is a lateral outgrowth of the stem, arising at a node, generally flattened and green, and specialised chiefly for photosynthesis and transpiration.

The particular way in which flowers are arranged on the floral axis (also called the peduncle) is called the inflorescence.

The flower is the characteristic reproductive structure of angiosperms (flowering plants), typically borne at the tip of a stalk called the pedicel, which widens at its tip into the receptacle -- the…

The fruit is the structure that develops from a flower's ovary after fertilisation has taken place, and it typically encloses and protects the seeds that are maturing inside it as the ovules develop i…

The seed develops from a fertilised ovule once fertilisation is complete, and it represents the next generation of the plant in a protected, often dormancy-capable form, ready to germinate under suita…

Family Malvaceae, commonly called the mallow family (and including the cotton plant, of major commercial importance), is a family of herbs, shrubs and occasionally small trees, most reliably recognise…

Family Solanaceae, popularly known as the potato family, is a large and economically important family of herbs, shrubs and, occasionally, small trees, distributed widely across tropical, subtropical a…

Family Brassicaceae (also historically called Cruciferae, from the cross-shaped arrangement of its petals) is a family of herbs widely distributed in temperate and subtropical regions, including sever…

Family Compositae (also called Asteraceae, and among the very largest flowering-plant families by number of species) consists mostly of herbs, distributed almost worldwide, and is defined above all by…

Family Leguminosae (also called Fabaceae), the pea family, ranges in habit from small herbs to large trees and is one of the most economically vital plant families, both for direct food value and for…

Poaceae (the grass family) and Liliaceae are the two monocotyledonous families included in this chapter's syllabus, and while both share the basic features common to all monocots -- a fibrous, adventi…

This chapter surveyed the morphology of a flowering plant organ by organ, then applied that vocabulary to describe seven representative plant families in precise, comparable terms.