rhizome

A harvested ginger rhizome

A Euphorbia plant sending out rhizomes

An iris rhizome growing above ground

In botany, a rhizome (from Greek: ῥίζωμα "rootstalk") is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes may also be referred to as creeping rootstalks, or rootstocks.

A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but, unlike a rhizome, which is the main stem of the plant, a stolon sprouts from an existing stem, has long internodes, and generates new shoots at the end, e.g., the strawberry plant. In general, rhizomes have short internodes; they send out roots from the bottom of the nodes and new upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes. It is a method of reproduction for plants. A stem tuber is a thickened part of a rhizome or stolon that has been enlarged for use as a storage organ.^[1] In general, a tuber is high in starch, for example, the common potato, which is a modified stolon. The term tuber is often used imprecisely, and is sometimes applied to plants with rhizomes.

Some plants have rhizomes that grow above ground or that lie at the soil surface, including some Iris species, and ferns, whose spreading stems are rhizomes. Plants with underground rhizomes include ginger, bamboo, the Venus Flytrap, Chinese lantern, Western poison-oak,^[2] hops, and turmeric, significant for their medicinal properties^{[citation needed]}, and the weeds Johnson grass, bermuda grass, and purple nut sedge.

For many plants, the rhizome is used by farmers and gardeners to propagate the plants by a process known as vegetative reproduction. Examples of plants that are propagated this way include hops, asparagus, ginger, irises, Lily of the Valley, Cannas, and sympodial orchids.

See also

• Mycorrhiza

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rhizomes

1. ^ Kingsley R. Stern Introductory Plant Biology, 10th ed. ISBN 0072909412
2. ^ C.Michael Hogan (2008) Western poison-oak: Toxicodendron diversilobum, GlobalTwitcher, ed. Nicklas Stromberg [1]