Monday, May 10, 2010

Anatomy of a corn plant

This first picture simply shows the way a corn plant emerges from its seed. Tap root first and then the shoot. The growing point slowly moves upward as the shoots grows up. All of a corn plants leaves extend from the growing point.


This picture shows the portion of the plant that was protected from the frost by the soil. The red part of the bottom leaf was exposed, but the white parts is plant tissue that was not exposed and therefore did not get frosted. The reason it is white is because it was not exposed to sunlight and did not activate the chlorophyll. The growing point is in the center of the plant where my finger is pointing.
This is the plant after tearing off the dead tissue. You can see that some of the tissue, even though it was above ground, was protected by the outer leaf and did not get killed off. After seeing this I am a lot less worried about my corn coming back from this frost damage.

No comments:

Post a Comment