Herbaceous plant

Herbaceous plants are vascular plants

that have no persistent woody stems
above ground,[1][2] including many
perennials, and nearly all annuals and
biennials.[3] Herbaceous plants include
graminoids, forbs, and ferns.[4] Forbs are
generally defined as herbaceous broad
leafed plants,[5] while graminoids are
plants with grass-like appearance
including the true grasses, sedges, and
rushes.[6][7] In botany, the term
"herbaceous plants" is often shortened to
"herbs", but this word has also other
meanings in cooking, medicine, and other
fields.[8]

Trientalis latifolia (Broadleaf Starflower) is a

perennial herbaceous plant of the ground layer of
forests in western North America.

Herbaceous plants most often are low

growing plants, different from woody
plants like trees, and tend to have soft
green stems that lack lignification and
their above-ground growth is ephemeral
and often seasonal in duration.[9] By
contrast, non-herbaceous vascular plants
are woody plants which have stems
above ground that remain alive, even
during any dormant season, and grow
shoots the next year from the above-
ground parts – these include trees,
shrubs, vines and woody bamboos.
Banana plants are also regarded as a
herbaceous plant because the stem does
not contain true woody tissue.[10]

Types of herbaceous plants

Herbaceous plants include plants that
have an annual, biennial, or perennial life
cycle. Annual herbaceous plants die
completely at the end of the growing
season or when they have flowered and
fruited, and then new plants grow from
seed.[11] Herbaceous perennial and
biennial plants may have stems that die
at the end of the growing season, but
parts of the plant survive under or close
to the ground from season to season (for
biennials, until the next growing season,
when they flower and die). New growth
develops from living tissues remaining
on or under the ground, including roots, a
caudex (a thickened portion of the stem
at ground level) or various types of
underground stems, such as bulbs,
corms, stolons, rhizomes and tubers.
Examples of herbaceous biennials
include carrot, parsnip and common
ragwort; herbaceous perennials include
potato, peony, hosta, mint, most ferns
and most grasses.

Habit and habitat

Some relatively fast-growing herbaceous
plants (especially annuals) are pioneers,
or early-successional species. Others
form the main vegetation of many stable
habitats, occurring for example in the
ground layer of forests, or in naturally
open habitats such as meadow, salt
marsh or desert. Some habitats, like
grasslands and prairies and savannas,[12]
are dominated by herbaceous plants
along with aquatic environments like
ponds, streams and lakes.

Some herbaceous plants can grow rather

large, such as the genus Musa, to which
the banana belongs.[13]

The age of some herbaceous perennial

plants can be determined by
herbchronology, the analysis of annual
growth rings in the secondary root xylem.

Herbaceous plants do not produce

perennializing above ground structures
using lignin, which is a complex phenolic
polymer deposited in the secondary cell
wall of all vascular plants. The
development of lignin during vascular
plant evolution provided mechanical
strength, rigidity, and hydrophobicity to
secondary cell walls, allowing plants to
grow tall and transport water and
nutrients over longer distances within the
plant body. Since most woody plants are
perennials with a longer life cycle
because it takes more time and more
resources (nutrients and water) to
produce persistently living lignified
woody stems, they are not as able to
colonize open and dry ground as rapidly
as herbs.
The surface of herbs is a catalyst for
dew,[14][15] which in arid climates and
seasons is the main type of precipitation
and is necessary for the survival of
vegetation,[16][17] i.e. in arid areas,
herbaceous plants are a generator of
precipitation and the basis of an
ecosystem. Most of the water vapor that
turns into dew comes from the air, not
the soil.[18][19] The taller the herb, the
more dew it produces,[20][21] so a short
cut of the herbs necessitates watering.
For example if you frequently and shortly
cut the grass without watering in an arid
zone, then desertification occurs, as
shown here .
References
1. Flora of the British Isles, Clapham,
Tutin, and Warburg, 2nd edition
2. Richard N. Arteca (14 February
2014). Introduction to Horticultural
Science . Cengage Learning.
pp. 584–. ISBN 978-1-111-31279-4.
3. Solomon, E.P.; Berg, L.R.; Martin, D.W.
(2004). Biology . Brooks/Cole
Thomson Learning. ISBN 978-0-534-
49547-3.
4. Kailash Chandra Bebarta (2011).
Dictionary of Forestry and Wildlife
Sciences . Concept Publishing
Company. pp. 224–. ISBN 978-81-
8069-719-7.
5. Wilson G. Pond (16 November 2004).
Encyclopedia of Animal Science
(Print) . CRC Press. pp. 425–.
ISBN 978-0-8247-5496-9.
6. Iain J. Gordon; Herbert H.T. Prins (14
September 2007). The Ecology of
Browsing and Grazing . Springer
Science & Business Media. pp. 220–.
ISBN 978-3-540-72422-3.
7. Brian R. Chapman; Eric G. Bolen (31
August 2015). Ecology of North
America . John Wiley & Sons.
pp. 98–. ISBN 978-1-118-97154-3.
 8. Ernest Small; National Research
Council Canada (2006). Culinary
Herbs . NRC Research Press. pp. 1–.
ISBN 978-0-660-19073-0.
9. Andrew J. Lack; David E. Evans
(2005). Plant Biology . Garland
Science. pp. 199–. ISBN 978-0-415-
35643-5.
10. "Is A Banana A Fruit Or A Herb? |
Lexico" . Lexico Dictionaries |
English.
11. Levine, Carol. 1995. A guide to
wildflowers in winter: herbaceous
plants of northeastern North
America. New Haven: Yale University
Press. page 1.
12. Patrick L. Osborne (31 August 2000).
Tropical Ecosystems and Ecological
Concepts . Cambridge University
Press. pp. 50–. ISBN 978-0-521-
64523-2.
13. Picq, Claudine & INIBAP, eds. (2000).
Bananas (PDF) (English ed.).
Montpellier: International Network
for the Improvement of Banana and
Plantains/International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute. ISBN 978-2-
910810-37-5. Archived from the
original (PDF) on April 11, 2013.
Retrieved January 31, 2013.
14. Erell, Evyatar (2005). "Predicting air
temperatures in city streets on the
basis of measured reference data"
(PDF). University of Adelaide, South
Australia.
15. Xu, Yingying (2017). "A Novel
method for monitoring urban dew
condensation and its application" .
Tehnički Vjesnik.
16. Wang, Chengdong (2017).
"Formation and influencing factors
of dew in sparse elm woods and
grassland in a semi-arid area" . Acta
Ecologica Sinica.
17. Uclés, O (2013). "Role of dewfall in
the water balance of a semiarid
coastal steppe ecosystem".
Hydrological Processes. 28 (4):
2271–2280. doi:10.1002/hyp.9780 .
18. Shiklomanov (2004). "Experimental
research on the role of dew in arid
ecosystem of Gobi desert, inner
Mongolia" . Research Basins and
Hydrological Planning.
ISBN 9781439833858.
19. Wen, XueFa (2011). "Dew water
isotopic ratios and their
relationships to ecosystem water
pools and fluxes in a cropland and a
grassland in China". Ecosystem
Ecology. 168 (2): 549–561.
doi:10.1007/s00442-011-2091-0 .
PMID 21822725 . S2CID 11954532 .
20. Sudmeyer, R.A. (1994). "Measured
dewfall and potential condensation
on grazed pasture in the Collie River
basin, southwestern Australia" .
Journal of Hydrology. 154 (1–4):
255–269.
Bibcode:1994JHyd..154..255S .
doi:10.1016/0022-1694(94)90220-
8.
 21. Xiao, H. (2009). "Effect of vegetation
type and growth stage on dewfall,
determined with high precision
weighing lysimeters at a site in
northern Germany" . Journal of
Hydrology. 377 (1–2): 43–49.
Bibcode:2009JHyd..377...43X .
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