Development in the Vascular Plants Important concepts in this chapter are growth, differentiation and development. The authors make the point that growth is an irreversible increase in size and almost always results from both cell division and cell enlargement. Cell division alone is not sufficient to account for growth, although cell enlargement is sufficient to produce growth.
Indeterminate growth characterizes plants in the vegetative mode.
Indeterminate growth is defined as an unrestricted number of lateral organs produced by the shoot apical meristem. Differentiation, as the name implies, indicates that differences occur between cells or between tissues. A distinctiveness arises due to changes in cell properties. Development results from the total sequence of changes that occur in an organ or tissue. The text defines development as the sum total of events that contribute to the progressive elaboration of the body of an organism.