B I O L O G Y L I T E R A T U R E
S O P H I E A D E L A I D E
M O N O C O T S A N D D I C O T S
Monocots and dicots can be distinguished through four of their distinct structural features: roots, stem, leaf and flower. The name comes from when they first begin their life cycle as a seedling, where the monocot has one vein, and the dicot has two. Though small, this difference allows the two types of plants to develop in very different ways.
I found some plants and tried to classify them as either a monocot or a dicot based on the characteristics that I saw. Here are some that I found.
I went to the supermarket after school and saw some succulents. I couldn't immediately tell whether they were monocots or dicots because they were mostly all flower shaped, with lots of petals. However when I was browsing through I noticed one of the succulents had its root popped out of the soil. It was one big root with little hairs growing out of it, so I could tell that it was a taproot, which meant that succulents were dicots.
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I bought a few succulents and cacti. When I returned home, I placed the pots in an outdoor space next to a few of my other plants that I grew.
Most of the plants that I grow are actually succulents. I have a few that I think are of the same species, however one of the first ones I ever got I am beginning to propagate.
Here is a family of succulents that I purchased from the same supermarket a while back.
Here is the succulent that I am trying to propagate by snapping off the petals and sticking it in the soil.
Here, you can actually see that my propagation techniques are successful because the petal has actually begun to sprout some baby petals. This confirms that succulents are dicots because the sprout has two baby petals instead of one.
This is another one of my succulents that I was moving into a different pot. You can see that it has a large taproot.
This is a dry succulent that I found similar to the one of the left. The bottom has a large hole where the taproot used to be.
I have nothing to say about these succulents except that they're my favourite and that they're also dicots. :)
I saw a lot of plants today, so succulents weren't the only dicots I saw, so here are a few other dicots that I saw throughout the day. The first three ones are dicots because their veins are webbed and intersect with each other.
Taproots allow for larger, thicker and stronger stems, which often result in wood. So any plants that produce wood are dicots, which means all trees are dicots.
Monocots however are more stringy and flimsy. These two plants (below) have stringy leaves with parallel veins running down them. When they sprout, they first develops only one long leaf; which is why they are called monocots.
Grass doesn't only have parallel veins, but they also have many thin, fibrous roots.
The veins of this plant aren't that visible, however the shape of the leaf is already enough to depict the grain of the veins.