Growing Food: A Guide to Food Production

E The Plant

Sometimes biennials behave like annuals, often as a result of some form of stress,
and produce seed in their first year. The plants are then said to have bolted, and the
plants themselves become known as bolters. These plants normally cannot be eaten.

• Herbaceous perennials, such as Perennial rye-grass and couch grass, in which the

end of the rainy season. In spring, or with the onset of rains, new shoots develop
from underground storage organs.

• Woody perennials, such as fruit trees and bushes, in which each year’s new growth
  arises from the woody stems, so that height and breadth are increased every year.

The classification, or taxonomy, of plants is based on the similarity between various
parts of their anatomy, particularly the flowering parts.

All known plants are classified by botanists under the following headings:
Divisions, Classes, Orders, Families, Genera and Species, described below.
Sometimes these are further subdivided into sub-orders, sub-families etc.
Botanists are constantly changing or modifying the classification of individual plants
as they find new evidence either for or against relationships between different plants.
This often leads to the same species being classified in more than one way, leading to
two or more synonyms (syn.). The synonyms of some of the most important food crops
are included in Section 2“Description and Characteristics of the Main Food Crops”
and also in Section 3A “Naming and Classification of Food Crops”, pages 288–309.
Disagreement amongst botanists can even extend to the naming of plant families, the
Cruciferae family for example sometimes being classified as the Brassicaceae family.
A basic understanding of how and why plants are classified is very useful; if there is
an international understanding among all people who work with plants and seed this
helps to reduce confusion. Plant classification in the common language of Latin allows

36 TONY WINCH

An annual plant is one that completes its life cycle in one growing season; the
plant develops, flowers, fruits and dies, usually within one year. Examples include
beans, wheat, maize and rice.
Abiennial plant is one that normally develops during its first year then flowers,
fruits and dies only in its second year. Examples include onions, carrots and beetroot.

Aperennial plant is one that continues to grow from year to year. There are two
kinds of perennial plants:

stems and leaves die down to ground level or close to it in the autumn or at the

All plants are divided into monocotyledons ( monocotsŽ), which have a single
cotyledon in the seed, and dicotyledons ( dicotsŽ ), which have two. These two plant
types have different growth habits; monocots grow from the base of their leaves,
pushing their leaves up and out from this base, while dicots grow outwards from the
edges of the leaves.

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1Ea. Annual / Biennial / Perennial

1Eb. Botanical Classification / Taxonomy