Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants. The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may allow selfing; some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization. Flowers are the site where gametophytes develop. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to cause them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen. After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops into fruit containing seeds. In addition to facilitating the reproduction of flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by humans to bring beauty to their environment, as objects of romance, religion, medicine and as a source of food; the essential parts of a flower can be considered in two parts: the vegetative part, consisting of petals and associated structures in the perianth, the reproductive or sexual parts. A stereotypical flower consists of four kinds of structures attached to the tip of a short stalk.
Each of these kinds of parts is arranged in a whorl on the receptacle. The four main whorls are as follows: Collectively the calyx and corolla form the perianth. Calyx: the outermost whorl consisting of units called sepals. Corolla: the next whorl toward the apex, composed of units called petals, which are thin and colored to attract animals that help the process of pollination. Androecium: the next whorl, consisting of units called stamens. Stamens consist of two parts: a stalk called a filament, topped by an anther where pollen is produced by meiosis and dispersed. Gynoecium: the innermost whorl of a flower, consisting of one or more units called carpels; the carpel or multiple fused carpels form a hollow structure called an ovary, which produces ovules internally. Ovules are megasporangia and they in turn produce megaspores by meiosis which develop into female gametophytes; these give rise to egg cells. The gynoecium of a flower is described using an alternative terminology wherein the structure one sees in the innermost whorl is called a pistil.
A pistil may consist of a number of carpels fused together. The sticky tip of the pistil, the stigma, is the receptor of pollen; the supportive stalk, the style, becomes the pathway for pollen tubes to grow from pollen grains adhering to the stigma. The relationship to the gynoecium on the receptacle is described as hypogynous, perigynous, or epigynous. Although the arrangement described above is considered "typical", plant species show a wide variation in floral structure; these modifications have significance in the evolution of flowering plants and are used extensively by botanists to establish relationships among plant species. The four main parts of a flower are defined by their positions on the receptacle and not by their function. Many flowers lack some parts or parts may be modified into other functions and/or look like what is another part. In some families, like Ranunculaceae, the petals are reduced and in many species the sepals are colorful and petal-like. Other flowers have modified stamens.
Flowers show great variation and plant scientists describe this variation in a systematic way to identify and distinguish species. Specific terminology is used to describe their parts. Many flower parts are fused together; when petals are fused into a tube or ring that falls away as a single unit, they are sympetalous. Connate petals may have distinctive regions: the cylindrical base is the tube, the expanding region is the throat and the flaring outer region is the limb. A sympetalous flower, with bilateral symmetry with an upper and lower lip, is bilabiate. Flowers with connate petals or sepals may have various shaped corolla or calyx, including campanulate, tubular, salverform or rotate. Referring to "fusion," as it is done, appears questionable because at least some of the processes involved may be non-fusion processes. For example, the addition of intercalary growth at or below the base of the primordia of floral appendages such as sepals, petals and carpels may lead to a common base, not the result of fusion.
Many flowers have a symmetry. When the perianth is bisected through the central axis from any point and symmetrical halves are produced, the flower is said to be actinomorphic or regular, e.g. rose or trillium. This is an example of radial symmetry; when flowers are bisected and produce only one line that produces symmetrical halves, the flower is said to be irregular or zygomorphic, e.g. snapdragon or most orchids. Flowers may be directly attached to the plant at their base; the stem or stalk subtending a flower is called a peduncle. If a peduncle supports more than o
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Stresa
Stresa is a town and comune of about 5,000 residents on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about 90 kilometres northwest of Milan. It is situated on rail routes to the Simplon Pass; the name of this town first appeared in documents in AD 998. In the 15th century it grew into a fishing community and owed feudal allegiance to the Visconti family, it subsequently came under the control of the Borromeo family. In 1948 American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway visited the town, he had set part of his 1929 novel Farewell to Arms in the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees. In 2002 Stresa hosted the 10th International Hemingway Conference. Stresa has played host to a number of political conferences in the 20th century, including in: 1935: the UK, Italy and France re-affirm the Treaty of Locarno and agree to form the Stresa front to combat and contain Nazi Germany. 1958: the foundations of what would become Europe's Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community were formulated in Stresa.
Stresa is the venue for the "Settimane Musicali". Regular boat services from the town's two docks provide access to the nearby Borromean Islands; the cable-car offers a 20-minute ride to the summit of Monte Mottarone, with the Giardino Botanico Alpinia en route. Eurocity services connect to Milano and Geneva. Villa Ducale, commissioned by Giacomo Filippo Bolongaro and dating from about 1770. In 1848 the villa passed to the Italian philosopher Antonio Rosmini-Serbati and today it houses the International Centre for Rosminian Studies. Villa Dell'Orto, built in 1900, it was designed by Boffi. The large Villa Pallavicino, between Stresa and Belgirate, it was the inspiration of Ruggero Bonghi in the 1850s and now is the site of a zoological park. The church of S. Ambrogio Villa Castelli, location of the black comedy Beati i ricchi by Salvatore Samperi, the TV movie horror Ho incontrato un'ombra by Daniele D'Anza, the thriller The Bishop's Bedroom by Dino Risi and the drama La Sapienza by Eugène Green.
Hotel Regina Palace, location of Totò al giro d'Italia by Mario Mattoli, Miss Italia by Duilio Coletti, Grand Hotel Excelsior by Castellano & Pipolo. Official site Stresa Festival - Settimane Musicali di Stresa e del Lago Maggiore Stresa. Net – tourist information Visit Stresa – tourist information
Eudicots
The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a clade of flowering plants, called tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The botanical terms were introduced in 1991 by evolutionary botanist James A. Doyle and paleobotanist Carol L. Hotton to emphasize the evolutionary divergence of tricolpate dicots from earlier, less specialized, dicots; the close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was seen in morphological studies of shared derived characters. These plants have a distinct trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Molecular evidence confirmed the genetic basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains and dicotyledonous traits; the term means "true dicotyledons", as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have characteristics of the dicots. The term "eudicots" has subsequently been adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms, monocots being the other.
The remaining angiosperms include magnoliids and what are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots, but these terms have not been or adopted, as they do not refer to a monophyletic group. The other name for the eudicots is tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen. Members of the group have tricolpate pollen; these pollens have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the other seed plants produce monosulcate pollen, with a single pore set in a differently oriented groove called the sulcus; the name "tricolpates" is preferred by some botanists to avoid confusion with the dicots, a nonmonophyletic group. Numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants and ornamentals; some common and familiar eudicots include members of the sunflower family such as the common dandelion, the forget-me-not and other members of its family, buttercup and macadamia. Most leafy trees of midlatitudes belong to eudicots, with notable exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, Ginkgo biloba, not an angiosperm.
The name "eudicots" is used in the APG system, of 1998, APG II system, of 2003, for classification of angiosperms. It is applied to a monophyletic group, which includes most of the dicots. "Tricolpate" is a synonym for the "Eudicot" monophyletic group, the "true dicotyledons". The number of pollen grain furrows or pores helps classify the flowering plants, with eudicots having three colpi, other groups having one sulcus. Pollen apertures are any modification of the wall of the pollen grain; these modifications include thinning and pores, they serve as an exit for the pollen contents and allow shrinking and swelling of the grain caused by changes in moisture content. The elongated apertures/ furrows in the pollen grain are called colpi, along with pores, are a chief criterion for identifying the pollen classes; the eudicots can be divided into two groups: the basal eudicots and the core eudicots. Basal eudicot is an informal name for a paraphyletic group; the core eudicots are a monophyletic group.
A 2010 study suggested the core eudicots can be divided into two clades, Gunnerales and a clade called "Pentapetalae", comprising all the remaining core eudicots. The Pentapetalae can be divided into three clades: Dilleniales superrosids consisting of Saxifragales and rosids superasterids consisting of Santalales, Berberidopsidales and asteridsThis division of the eudicots is shown in the following cladogram: The following is a more detailed breakdown according to APG IV, showing within each clade and orders: clade Eudicots order Ranunculales order Proteales order Trochodendrales order Buxales clade Core eudicots order Gunnerales order Dilleniales clade Superrosids order Saxifragales clade Rosids order Vitales clade Fabids order Fabales order Rosales order Fagales order Cucurbitales order Oxalidales order Malpighiales order Celastrales order Zygophyllales clade Malvids order Geraniales order Myrtales order Crossosomatales order Picramniales order Malvales order Brassicales order Huerteales order Sapindales clade Superasterids order Berberidopsidales order Santalales order Caryophyllales clade Asterids order Cornales order Ericales clade Campanulids order Aquifoliales order Asterales order Escalloniales order Bruniales order Apiales order Dipsacales order Paracryphiales clade Lamiids order Solanales order Lamiales order Vahliales order Gentianales order Boraginales order Garryales order Metteniusales order Icacinales Eudicots at the Encyclopedia of Life Eudicots, Tree of Life Web Project Dicots Plant Life Forms
Vine
A vine is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent stems, lianas or runners. The word vine can refer to such stems or runners themselves, for instance, when used in wicker work. In parts of the world, the term "vine" applies to grapevines, while the term "climber" is used for all climbing plants. Certain plants always grow as vines. For instance, poison ivy and bittersweet can grow as low shrubs when support is not available, but will become vines when support is available. A vine displays a growth form based on long stems; this has two purposes. A vine may use rock exposures, other plants, or other supports for growth rather than investing energy in a lot of supportive tissue, enabling the plant to reach sunlight with a minimum investment of energy; this has been a successful growth form for plants such as kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle, both of which are invasive exotics in parts of North America. There are some tropical vines that develop skototropism, grow away from the light, a type of negative phototropism.
Growth away from light allows the vine to reach a tree trunk, which it can climb to brighter regions. The vine growth form may enable plants to colonize large areas even without climbing high; this is the case with ground ivy. It is an adaptation to life in areas where small patches of fertile soil are adjacent to exposed areas with more sunlight but little or no soil. A vine can root in the soil but have most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both environments; the evolution of a climbing habit has been implicated as a key innovation associated with the evolutionary success and diversification of a number of taxonomic groups of plants. It has evolved independently in several plant families, using many different climbing methods, such as: twining the stem around a support by way of adventitious, clinging roots with twining petioles using tendrils, which can be specialized shoots, leaves, or inflorescences using tendrils which produce adhesive pads at the end that attach themselves quite to the support using thorns or other hooked structures, such as hooked branches The climbing fetterbush is a woody shrub-vine which climbs without clinging roots, tendrils, or thorns.
It directs its stem into a crevice in the bark of fibrous barked trees where the stem adopts a flattened profile and grows up the tree underneath the host tree's outer bark. The fetterbush sends out branches that emerge near the top of the tree. Most vines are flowering plants; these may be divided into woody vines or lianas, such as wisteria and common ivy, herbaceous vines, such as morning glory. One odd group of vining plants is the fern genus Lygodium, called climbing ferns; the stem does not climb. The fronds unroll from the tip, theoretically never stop growing. A twining vine known as a bine, is one that climbs by its shoots growing in a helix, in contrast to vines that climb using tendrils or suckers. Many bines have rough downward-pointing bristles to aid their grip. Hops are a commercially important example of a bine; the direction of rotation of the shoot tip during climbing is autonomous and does not derive from the shoot's following the sun around the sky – the direction of twist does not therefore depend upon which side of the equator the plant is growing on.
This is shown by the fact that some bines always twine clockwise, including runner bean and bindweed, while others twine anticlockwise, including French bean and climbing honeysuckles. The contrasting rotations of bindweed and honeysuckle was the theme of the satirical song "Misalliance", written and sung by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann; the term "vine" applies to cucurbitaceae like cucumbers where botanists refer to creeping vines. Gardeners can use the tendency of climbing plants to grow quickly. If a plant display is wanted a climber can achieve this. Climbers can be trained over walls, fences, etc. Climbers can be grown over other plants to provide additional attraction. Artificial support can be provided; some climbers climb by themselves. Vines differ in size and evolutionary origin. Darwin classified climbing groups based on their climbing method, he classified five classes of vines – twining plants, leaf climbers, tendril bearers, root climbers and hook climbers. Vines are unique in that they have multiple evolutionary origins and a wide range of phenotypic plasticity.
They reside in tropical locations and have the unique ability to climb. Vines are able to grow in both deep shade and full sun due to their wide range of phenotypic plasticity; this climbing action prevents shading by neighbors and allows the vine to grow out of reach of herbivores. The environment where a vine can grow is determined by the climbing mechanism of a vine and how far it can spread across supports. There are many theories suppor
Wisteria floribunda
Wisteria floribunda is a species of flowering plant in the pea family Fabaceae, native to Japan. Growing to 9 m, deciduous twining climber, it was brought from Japan to the United States in 1830's. Since it has become one of the most romanticized flowering garden plants, it is a common subject for bonsai, along with Wisteria sinensis. The flowering habit of Japanese wisteria is the most spectacular of the Wisteria family, it sports the longest flower racemes of any wisteria. These racemes burst into great trails of clustered white, violet, or blue flowers in early- to mid-spring; the flowers carry a distinctive fragrance similar to that of grapes. The early flowering time of Japanese wisteria can cause problems in temperate climates, where early frosts can destroy the coming years' flowers, it will flower only after passing from juvenile to adult stage, a transition that may take many years just like its cousin Chinese wisteria. Japanese wisteria can grow over 30m long over many supports via powerful clockwise-twining stems.
The foliage consists of shiny, dark-green, pinnately compound leaves 10–30 cm in length. The leaves bear 9-13 oblong leaflets, it bears numerous poisonous, velvety, bean-like seed pods 5–10 cm long that mature in summer and persist until winter. Japanese wisteria prefers moist soils and full sun in USDA plant hardiness zones 5-9; the plant lives over fifty years. Those marked agm have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.'Shiro Noda','Snow Showers' or'Longissima Alba' agm - long white flower clusters'Kuchibeni' or'Carnea' - pink flowers ‘Domino’agm - pale lilac'Honbeni' or'Rosea'agm - pale rose flowers tipped purple, 18 in long'Issai Perfect' - light lavender flowers'Ito Koku Riu' or'Royal Purple' - dark blue or violet flowers scented, long clustered bunches, 30–50 cm long'Jako' or'Ivory Tower' ‘Kokuryu’agm - violet, scented'Lawrence'agm - pale violet flowers, deeper violet keel and wings'Longissima Kyushaku' - mauve-purple flowers on a raceme up to 6 ft or seven feet in length'Macrobotrys' or'Longissima' - reddish-violet flower clusters 1 m or longer'Macrobotrys Cascade' - white and pinkish-purple flowers, vigorous grower'Multijuga'agm - violet flowers with darker markings'Nana Richins Purple' - purple flowers'Nishiki' - variegated foliage'Plena' or'Violaceae Plena' - double blue flowers in dense clusters'Praecox' or'Domino' - purple flowers'Purpurea' - unknown - may be Wisteria sinensis ‘Consequa’, sometimes labeled purpurea'Rubra' - unknown - may be ‘Honbeni’ - sometimes labeled as Rubrum - deep pink to red flowers'Texas Purple' - may be a sinensis or a hybrid, short racemes, purple flowers, produced while the plant is still young'Violacea Plena' - double violet flowers, rosette-shaped'White with Blue Eye' - known as ‘Sekines Blue’ - fragrant Japanese Wisteria at MSU Japanese Wisteria as a pest University of Ohio fact sheet for Wisteria family
Leaf
A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant and is the principal lateral appendage of the stem. The leaves and stem together form the shoot. Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in "autumn foliage". A leaf is a thin, dorsiventrally flattened organ borne above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. In most leaves, the primary photosynthetic tissue, the palisade mesophyll, is located on the upper side of the blade or lamina of the leaf but in some species, including the mature foliage of Eucalyptus, palisade mesophyll is present on both sides and the leaves are said to be isobilateral. Most leaves have distinct upper surface and lower surface that differ in colour, the number of stomata, the amount and structure of epicuticular wax and other features. Leaves can have many different shapes and textures; the broad, flat leaves with complex venation of flowering plants are known as megaphylls and the species that bear them, the majority, as broad-leaved or megaphyllous plants. In the clubmosses, with different evolutionary origins, the leaves are simple and are known as microphylls.
Some leaves, such as bulb scales, are not above ground. In many aquatic species the leaves are submerged in water. Succulent plants have thick juicy leaves, but some leaves are without major photosynthetic function and may be dead at maturity, as in some cataphylls and spines. Furthermore, several kinds of leaf-like structures found in vascular plants are not homologous with them. Examples include flattened plant stems called phylloclades and cladodes, flattened leaf stems called phyllodes which differ from leaves both in their structure and origin; some structures of non-vascular plants function much like leaves. Examples include the phyllids of liverworts. Leaves are the most important organs of most vascular plants. Green plants are autotrophic, meaning that they do not obtain food from other living things but instead create their own food by photosynthesis, they capture the energy in sunlight and use it to make simple sugars, such as glucose and sucrose, from carbon dioxide and water. The sugars are stored as starch, further processed by chemical synthesis into more complex organic molecules such as proteins or cellulose, the basic structural material in plant cell walls, or metabolised by cellular respiration to provide chemical energy to run cellular processes.
The leaves draw water from the ground in the transpiration stream through a vascular conducting system known as xylem and obtain carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by diffusion through openings called stomata in the outer covering layer of the leaf, while leaves are orientated to maximise their exposure to sunlight. Once sugar has been synthesized, it needs to be transported to areas of active growth such as the plant shoots and roots. Vascular plants transport sucrose in a special tissue called the phloem; the phloem and xylem are parallel to each other but the transport of materials is in opposite directions. Within the leaf these vascular systems branch to form veins which supply as much of the leaf as possible, ensuring that cells carrying out photosynthesis are close to the transportation system. Leaves are broad and thin, thereby maximising the surface area directly exposed to light and enabling the light to penetrate the tissues and reach the chloroplasts, thus promoting photosynthesis.
They are arranged on the plant so as to expose their surfaces to light as efficiently as possible without shading each other, but there are many exceptions and complications. For instance plants adapted to windy conditions may have pendent leaves, such as in many willows and eucalyptss; the flat, or laminar, shape maximises thermal contact with the surrounding air, promoting cooling. Functionally, in addition to carrying out photosynthesis, the leaf is the principal site of transpiration, providing the energy required to draw the transpiration stream up from the roots, guttation. Many gymnosperms have thin needle-like or scale-like leaves that can be advantageous in cold climates with frequent snow and frost; these are interpreted as reduced from megaphyllous leaves of their Devonian ancestors. Some leaf forms are adapted to modulate the amount of light they absorb to avoid or mitigate excessive heat, ultraviolet damage, or desiccation, or to sacrifice light-absorption efficiency in favour of protection from herbivory.
For xerophytes the major constraint drought. Some window plants such as Fenestraria species and some Haworthia species such as Haworthia tesselata and Haworthia truncata are examples of xerophytes. and Bulbine mesembryanthemoides. Leaves function to store chemical energy and water and may become specialised organs serving other functions, such as tendrils of peas and other legumes, the protective spines of cacti and the insect traps in carnivorous plants such as Nepenthes and Sarracenia. Leaves are the fundamental structural units from which cones are constructed in gymnosperms and from which flowers are constructed in flowering plants; the internal organisation of most kinds of leaves has evolved to maximise exposure of the photosynthetic organelles, the chloroplasts, to light and to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide while at the same time controlling water loss. Their surfaces are waterproofed by the plant cuticle and gas exchange between the mesophyll cells and the atmosphere is controlled by minute openings called stomata which open or close to regulate the rate exchange of carbon dioxide and water vapour into
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