Plant leaves take on a wide variety of shapes, forms and colors, and some plants are even missing leaves completely (for example, saguaro cactus)!
Why learn leaf morphology?
Although there’s huge variation among different species, learning some basic leaf morphology is an important starting point for building further knowledge about plants. All of the terms are also important for when you use plant identification keys to find out a species of plant.
Let’s get started!
We start from the point where a leaf comes off the stem. A leaf attaches to the stem at a region called the node. The section between nodes (the bare stem between leaves) is called an internode. You might’ve heard of nodes in connection with plant propagation, where it is usually recommended to “cut the stem just below the node” to root the cutting successfully.