What Do Plant Veins and Leaves Actually Do? - PlantSnap

What Do Plant Veins and Leaves Actually Do?

by | Jun 22, 2018

When you’re peering at leaves through the lens of your camera, trying to identify a cool new plant in your yard, you might notice some weird lines along the leaves. These lines are called veins, and not just because they look like your veins. Plant veins are actually quite similar to human veins in many ways.

 

What do plants veins do?

 

In short, plant veins provide structure and support to plant leaves while also transporting water, nutrients, and energy to the rest of the plant.

When plants absorb water and nutrients through their roots, they use their vascular system to move the water and nutrients up into the rest of the plant. There are two principal tissue types that make up the veins of plants:

  • The xylem moves water and minerals. This flows from the plant’s roots upwards.
  • The phloem moves food energy around the plant. This flows in whichever direction the plant needs it to flow.

These two tissue types make up the “vascular bundle” of the plant.

Aside from moving minerals and nutrients around, veins help a plant hold its shape. Veins form the midrib of the leaf, which gives a leaf structure.

 

plant leaf vein

 

What do plant leaves do?

 

Leaves help absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2), and a leaf is actually an organ of the plant. Without sunlight and CO2, plants would be unable to photosynthesize, so there’s a good reason some plants go a bit crazy on leaf production!

Plant leaves come in a variety of shapes and size, as we discussed in our article on garden plant identification. While we often think of broad and flat leaves, pine needles are also leaves. 

The leaf and the vein of a plant work together to put CO2, energy from sunlight, and nutrients and minerals to work in doing whatever the plant needs to get done.

 

11 Comments

  1. Larry R

    More and more man begins to emulate nature in so called “cutting edge technologies”. Nature automatically follows natural law, which is the most efficient and yet simplistic of all technologies.

    Reply
  2. william

    I enjoy looking at this site ☺️

    Reply
  3. Dinesh Patel MD

    I love your sight and info
    As I forgot to
    Mention
    Thanks

    Reply
    • google

      ok?

      Reply
  4. Dinesh Patel MD

    Like human
    Do leaf have two lumens in venation system
    Artery for nutrition going
    Veins to drain out
    Or do they have one channel bundle where xylem and Phloem flow without fight
    Can one dye like gangrene if no water coming from xylem and one can see the effect
    Nature is unique
    Thank you for providing me info

    Reply
  5. mateo

    wish human societies could distribute energy to all its members as effectively as plants did…

    Reply
    • Kayla Fratt

      Technology just isn’t the same as nature!

      Reply
      • nature

        that is true you are kind!!!! my name is nature

        Reply
      • Jffu

        True

        Reply
  6. tonystarkvin

    its very useful thank u for sharing this article

    Reply
  7. smith lince

    In this kind of information is good and useful.

    Reply

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