Rhizome branching

Herbs with rhizomes, corms, or bulbs, or rarely woody climbers stems leafy or leaves basal, or radical, or rarely reduced to scales and then with the branches becoming cladodes a very large complex, the lilies, which is very difficult to delimit.Order Liliales... 

Additional sources included arils, balsams, barks, beans, berries, branches, buds, bulbs, calyxes, capsules, calkms. cones, flowering tops, fronds, gums, hips, husks, kernels, needles, nuts, peels, pits, pulps, rhizomes, rind, roots, seeds, shoots, stalks, sitgnias. siolons thalli. rwigs. wood, and wood sawdust, as well as some entire plants. 

Features Leaves approximately five inches by two inches, broadly lanceolate, entire at edges, dark green, with parallel veins. Flowers small, sweet-scented, white, bellshaped, pendulous, on distinct (eight to twelve-stalked) flower stem. Rhizome slender, cylindrical, pale brown, with eight to ten long, branched rootlets at each joint, internodes about two inches long. 

The underground portion of the stem represents the site for rhizome development and, in many instances, the formation of lateral branches. The length of this portion of the stem depends on the planting depth of the seed tubers shallow planting is undesirable. Swanton (1986) found that the dry weight of the underground stem was substantially higher in cultivated clones (35.3 g) than in wild clones (16.2 g). 

Approximately 20 weeks after planting, tuber bulking accelerated, with stored carbon redistributed from other organs into the developing tubers (Somda et al., 1999). The tubers continued to accumulate carbon until the final harvest, at which time they contained 93.3 mg g 1 dwt or 437.8 mgg fwt (Table 10.5). By the end of the developmental cycle the tubers accounted for approximately 68% of the total plant carbon content, compared to 28% for the stems and less than 2% for each of the other plant parts. Approximately 61.2, 65.3, and 42.7% of carbon in the leaves, stems/branches, and rhizomes, respectively, were redistributed to the tubers (or lost via respiratory or other processes). The stems/branches contributed the greatest percentage of carbon to the mature tubers (77.2%), followed by the leaves (14.7%) and rhizomes (1.7%). 

Fig. 158.—-Equiselum arvense. P, sterile branch F. fertile branch with strobilus, or cone R, rhizome (underground) T, cross-section of cone, showing insertion of sporophylls in a whorl N, N -, sporophylls with pendant sporangia 5, 5 , S, spores with coiled elaters (el). (Gager.)...

Steroidal Alkaloids.—Further study on the biosynthesis of Veratrum alkaloids has been published (for earlier work see refs. 224 and 225). The results obtained with dormant rhizome slices of V. grandiflorum were that (a) labelled verazine (207) gave rise to radioactive rubijervine (211) and hakurirodine (210), a new alkaloid isolated from dormant tuber slices, and (b) labelled etioline (208), a probable progenitor of solanidine (209), was not incorporated into either alkaloid. It was concluded that the biosynthetic pathway to solanidine (209) branches from that to rubijervine (211) at verazine (207) (see Scheme 25). 

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