What? You don't see anything? Well you'll have to look closer...
Remember when I talked about cotyledons? They are embryonic leaves that a newly sprouted plant starts with. It's complicated stuff and probably not anything you'll need to know anytime soon.
Put simply a monocot (short for monocotyledonous plant) starts with one cotyledon. Crops that are monocots include: wheat, onions, and corn like this seed corn that just sprouted. Dicots (short for dicotyledonous plant) start with two cotyledons. Examples of dicots are: alfalfa, beans, and this sugar beet.
Remember these? They sprouted quite some time back.
The monocot on top may or may not be showing it's cotyledon, some monocots never do. I'm not sure if seed corn is one of them or not. Regardless, they're up. Soon their true leaves will unfurl and they'll be growing fast. On really bright sunny days when the corn has lots of water, the corn can grow so fast that you can hear it!
There are other differences between monocots and dicots. Hopefully I'll be able to talk more about them later. For now, the important thing is that the corn has started to sprout. Almost all the crops are up out of the ground now (still waiting on the popcorn, though) and the next big step in farming will begin: Cultivation!
No comments:
Post a Comment