Monocot plants are one of the two major botanical classes of flowering plants, or angiosperms. The other class includes the dicot flowering plants. These fundamental classes were given formal taxonomic standing by botanists in the mid-17th century, replacing previous plant classification systems that were based on growth form. Roughly one-fourth of all flowering plant species are monocots, including a number of species important to humans as food plants or ornamentals
Distinct Flowers
Monocots have distinctive morphological features that set them apart from the dicots. The flowers of monocot plants typically have petals, stamens and other floral parts in threes or multiples of three such as six or nine. Dicots have flower parts in multiples of four or five. The pollen grains from monocot flowers have a single furrow through the outer layers, while dicot pollen grains have three furrows. However, some monocots have features of dicots and some dicots have features of monocots, meaning there's a "fuzzy" border between these classes.
Leaves and Stems
The leaves of monocot plants tend to be elongated, with leaf veins running parallel along the leaf length. Dicot leaves tend to be more rounded with a network of auxiliary veins between the main veins. The vascular tissue in plant stems occurs in long strands called vascular bundles. In monocot plants, a cross section of the stem shows vascular bundles randomly scattered in the stem but with more toward the perimeter. In dicot plants, the vascular bundles are arranged in a column and show as a ring in a cross section of the stem.
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Cotyledons are the "seed leaves" within a seed that support and feed the embryo with the nutrients packed within the seed until the embryo produces its first leaves and begins photosynthesis. Seeds of monocot plants have a