Tracheids Sentence Examples

The vessels and tracheids are very various in size, shape and structure in different plants.

The tracheids or vessels, indifferently called tracheal elements, together with the immediately associated cells (usually amylom in Pteridophytes) constitute the xylem of the plant.

The sieve-tubes differ, however, from the tracheids in being immediately associated, apparently constantly, not with starchy parenchyma, but with parenchymatous cells, containing particularly abundant proteid contents, which seem to have a function intimately connected with the conducting function of the sieve-tubes, and which we may call proteid-cells.

Such a vascular cylinder is called a haplostele, and the axis containing it is said to be haplostelic. In the stele of the root the strands of tracheids along the lines where the xylem touches the pericycle are spiral or annular, and are the xylem elements first formed when the cylinder is developing.

Each strand of spiral or annular first-formed tracheids is called a protoxylem strand, as distinct from the metaxylem or rest of the xylem, which consists of thick-walled tracheids, the pits of which are often scalariform.

As a bundle is traced towards its blind termination in the mesophyll the peridesmic stereom first disappears, the sieve-tubes of the phloem are replaced by narrow elongated parenchyma cells, which soon die out, and the bundle ends with a strand of tracheids covered by the phloeotermic sheath.

In a few cases some of the tracheids have very thick walls and reduced cavities, functioning as mechanical rather than as waterconducting elements.

All transitions are found between such forms and typical tracheids.

Among Gymnosperms the secondary xylem is similarly simple, consisting of tracheids which act as stereom as well as hydrom, and a little amylom; while the phloem-parenchyma sometimes undergoes a differentiation, part being developed as amylom, part as proteid cells immediately associated with the sieve-tube, in other cases the proteid cells of the secondary phloem do not form part of the phloem-parenchyma, but occupy the top and bottom cellrows of the medullary rays, the middle rows consisting of ordinary starchy cells.

In Gymnosperms, where vessels and fibres are absent, the late summer wood is composed of radially narrow thick-walled tracheids, the wood of the succeeding spring being wide-celled and thin-walled, so that the limit of the years growth is very well marked.

If the recent work on the cabbage disease may be accepted, the bacteria make their entry at the water pores at the margins of the leaf, and thence via the glandular cells to the tracheids.

The pith is encircled by a cylinder of secondary wood, consisting of single or multiple radial rows of tracheids separated by broad medullary rays composed of large parenchymatous cells; the tracheids bear numerous bordered FIG.

Short and reticulately-pitted tracheal cells, similar to tracheids, often occur in the circummedullary region of cycadean stems. In an old stem of Cycas, Encephalartos or Macrozamia the secondary wood consists of several rather unevenly concentric zones, while in some other genera it forms a continuous mass as in conifers and normal dicotyledons.

A leaf-trace, as it passes through the cortex, has a collateral structure, the protoxylem being situated at the inner edge of the xylem; when it reaches the leaf-base the position of the spiral tracheids is gradually altered, and the endarch arrangement (protoxylem internal) gives place to a mesarch structure (protoxylem more or less central and not on the edge of the xylem strand).

In a bundle examined in the basal portion of a leaf the bulk of the xylem is found to be centrifugal in position, but internally to the protoxylem there is a group of centripetal tracheids; higher up in the petiole the xylem is mainly centripetal, the centrifugal wood being represented by a small arc of tracheids external to the protoxylem and separated from it by a few parenchymatous elements.

The wood consists of tracheids, with circular bordered pits on their radial walls, and in the late summer wood pits are unusually abundant on the tangential walls.

A point of anatomical interest is the occurrence in the vascular bundles of the cotyledons, scale-leaves, and elsewhere of a few centripetally developed tracheids, which give to the xylem-strands a mesarch structure such as characterizes the foliar bundles of cycads.

The sudden termination of the secondary tracheids against the pith-cells may afford evidence of root-structure as distinct from stem-structure, in which the radial rows of secondary tracheids pass into the irregularly-arranged primary elements next the pith.

It is in the nature of the secondary xylem that the Coniferales are most readily distinguished from the Dicotyledons and Cycadaceae; the wood is homogeneous in structure, consisting almost entirely of tracheids with circular or polygonal bordered pits on the radial walls, more particularly in the late summer wood.

The genus Pinus serves as an illustration of wood of a distinct type characterized by the absence of xylemparenchyma, except such as is associated with the numerous resincanals that occur abundantly in the wood, cortex and medullary rays; the medullary rays are composed of parenchyma and of horizontal tracheids with irregular ingrowths from their walls.

In a radial section of a pine stem each ray is seen to consist in the median part of a few rows of parenchymatous cells with large oval simple pits in their walls, accompanied above and below by horizontal tracheids with bordered pits.

In the Araucarian type of wood (Araucaria and Agathis) the bordered pits, which occur in two or three rows on the radial walls of the tracheids, are in mutual contact and polygonal in shape, the pits of the different rows are alternate and not on the same level; in this type of wood the annual rings are often much less distinct than in Cupressus, Pinus and other genera.

In Taxus, Torreya (California and the Far East) and Cephalotaxus the absence of resin-canals and the presence of spiral thickeningbands on the tracheids constitute well-marked characteristics.

When tracheids occur in the medullary rays of the xylem these are replaced in the phloem-region by irregular parenchymatous cells known as albuminous cells.

One form of Cephalotaxus is characterized by the presence of short tracheids in the pith, in shape like ordinary parenchyma, but in the possession of bordered pits and lignified walls agreeing with ordinary xylem-tracheids; it is probable that these short tracheids serve as reservoirs for storing rather than for conducting water.

A pine needle grown iji continuous light differs from one grown under ordinary conditions in the absence of hypodermal fibres, in the absence of the characteristic infoldings of the mesophyll cell-walls, in the smaller size of the resin-canals, &c. The endodermis in Pinus, Picea and many other genera is usually a well-defined layer of cells enclosing the vascular bundles, and separated from them by a tissue consisting in part of ordinary parenchyma and to some extent of isodiametric tracheids; but this tissue, usually spoken of as the pericycle, is in direct continuity with other stem-tissues as well as the pericycle.

The occurrence of short tracheids in close proximity to the veins is a characteristic of coniferous leaves; these elements assume two distinct forms - (I) the short isodiametric tracheids (transfusion-tracheids) closely associated with the veins; (2) longer tracheids extending across the mesophyll at right angles to the veins, and no doubt functioning as representatives of lateral veins.

It has been suggested that transfusion-tracheids represent, in part at least, the centripetal xylem, which forms a distinctive feature of cycadean leaf-bundles; these short tracheids form conspicuous groups laterally attached to the veins in Cunninghamia, abundantly represented in a similar position in the leaves of Sequoia, and scattered through the so-called pericycle in Pinus, Picea, &c. It is of interest to note the occurrence of precisely similar elements in the mesophyll of Lepidodendron leaves.

The wood is characterized by the presence of vessels in addition to tracheids.

The secondary wood of Ephedra consists of tracheids, vessels and parenchyma; the vessels are characterized by their wide lumen and by the large simple or slightly-bordered pits on their oblique end-walls.

The top and bottom rows of the xylem rays are often developed as irregularly-thickened radially-elongated tracheids which serve for the radial conduction of water, and communicate with the ordinary tracheids of the secondary xylem by large bordered pits.

When, in place of a number of such cells called tracheids, we have a continuous tube with the same kind of wall thickening, but composed of a number of cells whose cross walls have disappeared, the resulting structure is called a vessel.