General Science Quiz: Morphology of Flowering Plants: Root, Stem, Leaf and Flower

Halophytes are plants of saline soils, chiefly the mangroves of tidal creeks and deltas such as Rhizophora and Avicennia, and their morphology is shaped by that habitat: they bear pneumatophores, negatively geotropic breathing roots that rise out of the waterlogged mud, along with stilt and prop roots for support and…

The potato is an underground stem tuber, the swollen tip of an underground branch, and the proof is in its morphology: it bears nodes, the depressions called eyes, and each eye carries an axillary bud that can sprout into a new shoot.

The carrot stores food in its primary root, which is broad at the top and tapers steadily to a point, and that shape is described as conical.

The banyan's horizontal branches grow so long and heavy that they send down thick aerial roots which reach the soil, thicken into pillars and carry the weight of the branch; these are called prop or pillar roots.

The mud of a tidal swamp is waterlogged and almost free of oxygen, so these plants send up roots that grow vertically out of the soil into the air and take in oxygen through pores; such roots grow against gravity and are therefore called negatively geotropic.

In Opuntia and in many Euphorbia species the leaves are reduced to spines to cut down transpiration, and the stem takes over photosynthesis by becoming flattened, green and fleshy; such a stem is a phylloclade.

In a monocot leaf, such as that of wheat, maize, grass, banana or canna, the veins run side by side along the length of the lamina without forming a network, and this parallel venation goes with the other monocot features: one cotyledon in the seed, a fibrous root system, scattered…

In a racemose inflorescence the main axis does not end in a flower but keeps growing, so the lowest flower is the oldest and the youngest buds are at the tip; this upward order is called acropetal, as in radish, mustard and Larkspur.

In vexillary or papilionaceous aestivation the corolla has five petals of unequal size: one large posterior petal, the standard, which covers two lateral wing petals, which in turn cover the two smallest anterior petals that are fused into a keel.

A true fruit forms from the ovary alone, but in the apple and the pear the thalamus grows, becomes fleshy and forms the greater part of the edible tissue, while the ovary makes only the core; such a fruit is called a false or spurious fruit, and the specific type…

A drupe is a fleshy fruit with a thin epicarp, a mesocarp that may be pulpy as in the mango or fibrous as in the coconut, and a hard, stony endocarp enclosing a single seed; the coconut's shell is that endocarp and the white kernel is the seed.

The pea's ovary is made of one carpel whose two margins fuse to form a ridge, and the ovules are arranged in two rows along that ridge; this is marginal placentation, and it is why the pod opens to show a single row of seeds on each side.