Understandably, therefore, many species that have been domesticated as turfgrasses and ground covers are stoloniferous, forming dense clonal monocultures. In the case of strawberry, the stolon is often termed a runner . Some authors treat a runner as a specialized form of the stolon, in which the leaves on the stolon are reduced to very small or minute scales, in contrast to the stolon, on which some leaf blade can be observed, so that the stolon is actually a photosynthetic unit. By itself, a runner is not a self-sustaining structure, merely a connector between ramet and mother plant. In both cases, the leaves of the typical vegetative shoot are different from the stoloniferous shoots, i.e., the plant is heteroblastic .
Numerous plants grow by forming stems next to the substrate.
If the plant is lying on the substrate but does not form adventitious roots, the growth habit is termed procumbent . If the plant is lying on the substrate and forms adventitious roots, the growth habit is termed either repent or stoloniferous . Using the term stoloniferous generally requires that the plant must have two different types of vegetative shoots, not only one type, the creeping shoot.