A plant and its parts start small and get big.

The power that drives growth is water.  Growth is the equivalent of inflating a waterbed.

Fascinating Plant Factoid: the final water pressure inside a fully-grown plant cell is roughly the same as the air pressure in a car tyre.

To develop different forms, plant parts expand differentially  - rather like a tightly-packed life raft inflates into a complex shape.

But there's another force at work in plant development - senescence.

Senescence of cells and tissues sculpts and pierces the plant body to make holes, tubes and plastic forms, both during normal differentiation and in response to stressful environmental influences.

Senescence works in this creative way because all parts of the plant, from cells up to the whole organism, are capable of initiating and sustaining this activity.

Whether, when, where and how the capability to senesce is expressed is characteristically different for each cell type, tissue, organ and individual.

Here are some examples of the universality of the competence to deploy senescence in a constructive manner in plant development.

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