Vegetative Synonyms

The plants show great diversity in vegetative structure.

In this way we may distinguish, first, vegetative reproduction, the result of discontinuous growth of the tissues and cell-layers of the body as a whole, leading to (I) fission, (2) autotomy, or (3) vegetative budding; secondly, germinal reproduction, the result of the reproductive activity of the archaeocytes or germinal tissue.

A characteristic feature of the fungal vegetative plantbody (mycelium) is its formation from independent coenocytic tubes or cell-threads.

The formation of a massive body naturally involves the localization of the absorptive region, and the function of absorption (which in the simpler forms is carried out by the whole of the vegetative part of the mycelium penetrating a solid or immersed in a liquid substratum) is subserved by the outgrowth of the hyphae of the surface-layer of that region into rhizoids, which, like those of the Algae living on soil, resemble the root-hairs of the higher plants.

In order to effect this the individual chromosomes must become associated in some way, for there is no diminution in the actual amount of nuclear substance, and this leads to certain modifications in the division which are not seen in the vegetative nuclei.