Monocotyledon Facts

Monocotyledons are one of the two basic classes of flowering plant. The other is dicotyledons.
Monocotyledons are plants that sprout a single leaf from their seeds.
Monocotyledons are also known as monocots or Liliopsida.
There are approximately 50,000 species of monocots – about a quarter of all flowering plants.
Monocots include grasses, cereals, bamboos, date palms, aloes, snake plants, tulips, orchids and daffodils.
Monocots tend to grow quickly and their stems stay soft and pliable, except for bamboos and palms. Most are herbaceous.
The tubes or veins in monocot leaves run parallel to each other. They also develop a thick tangle of thin roots rather than a single long ‘tap’ root, like dicots.
The flower parts of monocots, such as petals, tend to be set in threes or multiples of three.
Unlike dicots, monocot stems grow from the inside. Dicots have a cambium, which is the layer of growing cells near the outside of the stem. Monocots rarely have a cambium.
Monocots are thought to have appeared about 90 million years ago, developing from water lily like dicots that lived in swamps.

This entry is filed under Interesting Facts.