vascular tissue
Americannoun
noun
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The tissue in vascular plants that circulates fluid and nutrients. There are two kinds of vascular tissue: xylem, which conducts water and nutrients up from the roots, and phloem, which distributes food from the leaves to other parts of the plant. Vascular tissue can be primary (growing from the apical meristem and elongating the plant body) or secondary (growing from the cambium and increasing stem girth). Seedless plants, and nearly all monocotyledons and herbaceous eudicotyledons, have only primary vascular tissue. The evolution of vascular tissue, especially xylem with its rigid water-conducting cells known as tracheids, provided the plant stem with greater support and allowed plants to grow upright to great heights.
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See also cambium ground tissue procambium See more at phloem xylem
Etymology
Origin of vascular tissue
First recorded in 1805–15
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In the process of transmuting the mid-rib of the leaf, the plant undergoes a proliferation of new vascular tissue — and avoids rotting while the rest of the leaf withers away.
From New York Times • Feb. 25, 2024
As long as a tree is not girdled — cut entirely around its circumference, severing all the vascular tissue — it will continue to live.
From Seattle Times • Nov. 12, 2023
Tree wounds that penetrate bark damage the cambium layer, vascular tissue that is vital to movement of water and nutrients in a tree.
From Seattle Times • Nov. 12, 2023
Plants that lack vascular tissue, which is formed of specialized cells for the transport of water and nutrients, are referred to as non-vascular plants.
From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015
"Yes, a morbid tendency often found in these cases of bony tumification of the vascular tissue of the mouth; but you must resist it, ma'am, as their life depends upon it."
From Queer Little Folks by Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.