Petiole (botany)
the stalk of a leaf
In botany, the petiole (), commonly known as the leaf stem or leaf stalk, is the stalk that attaches the leaf to the twigs, branches or stems of a plant. The terms petiolate and apetiolate are applied, respectively, to leaves with and without petioles.
Description
The petiole is a stalk that attaches a leaf to the rest of a plant. In some species, it is able to twist the leaf to face the sun, thus optimizing its exposure to sunlight.
In petiolate leaves, the leaf stalk may be long (as in the leaves of celery and rhubarb) or short (e.g. basil). When completely absent, the blade attaches directly to the stem and is said to be sessile or apetiolate. Subpetiolate leaves have an extremely short petiole and may appear sessile. The broomrape family, Orobanchaceae, is an example of a taxon in which the leaves are always sessile. In some other plant groups, such as the speedwell genus Veronica, petiolate and sessile leaves may occur in different species.
The public source identifies “Petiole (botany)” as the stalk of a leaf. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Petiole, botany and stalk.
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This entry incorporates text from “Petiole (botany)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.