Long shoots are rapidly growing shoots, produced mainly at the outer edge of the plant's canopy to achieve a taller or broader canopy reaching into the high light environment. From the widely spaced axillary buds along the long shoot form lateral branches that are short shoots with crowded leaves, because stem internodes do not form. Short shoots may be determinate , i.e., they form a mature structure and then terminate apical vegetative growth, or indeterminate , in which the apical meristem of the short shoot forms leaves year after year.
Some plants have long shoots and spur shoots , on which flowering often occurs.
A spur shoot tends to have some internodal elongation, hence its distinction from short shoots, which lack internodal elongation. The molecular triggers for long shoot-short shoot organization need to be carefully studied to determine what genes are involved. Long shoot-short shoot organization has not been studied intensively from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. In desert and semiarid, full sun habitats is where many examples of long shoot-short shoot organization can be observed. There are several possible benefits of this design.