The Vegetative Parts Of A Clivia
The vegetative plant starts with the germinating seed. Clivia seeds are naked since they do not have a seed coat. They are also recalcitrant (onortodoks), which means that they can germinate spontaneously, even in the ripe fruit; they can only be stored for a limited period of time and will die if desiccated beyond a certain point.
The seed consist of the endosperm (kiemwit) enclosing the embryo (embrio) consisting of one cotyledon (c in the figure), a plumule (pluimpie) and a radicle (kiemwortel of radikula).
The whole embryo is embedded in the endosperm and the tip of the radicle can be observed as a dark spot on the one end of the mature seed. During germination the cotyledon elongates to about 0,5 to 1 cm, thus pushing the plumule and radicle out of the seed, whilst the radicle starts to elongate to become the primary root (primêre wortel).
The primary root immediately produces a collar of root hairs (wortelhare) behind the root tip, and continues to do so as the root grows. The primary root (r1 in the figure) normally does not form secondary roots (sywortels).
It has a limited life span and is soon followed by adventitious roots (bywortels) originating from the first and later nodes (r2 in the figure).
The junction of the plumule or apical bud (apikale groeiknop) and the primary root forms the first node (knoop) of the stem where the cotyledon with its cotyledonary sheath (saadlobskede) (cs in the figure) is attached.
The cotyledon acts as a haustorium, (suigorgaan) responsible for absorbing nutrients from the endosperm.
The first vegetative leaf (b1 in the figure), produced by the apical meristem (apickale meristeem) of the plumule, consists of a sheath (blaarskede) with a very small lamina (blaarskyf). In orange and red Clivias the sheath of the first leaf is pigmented.
Figure 2 shows a young seedling (kiemplant) of Clivia miniata (1) as well as a longitudinal section of a slightly older seedling (2). The figure was copied from R Wettstein (1935). Handbuch der Systematischen Botanik.
