Inside Woody Stems - Meristems (Growth)

Inside Woody Stems
By Jim Conrad
Backyard Nature

The cambium layer is the only living part of the stem shown above -- even though it's such a thin zone that in the picture probably it doesn't show up at all. We just know that it exists between the darker bark and the lighter wood. Cambium cells, which form a kind of cylinder inside the the twig, divide and produce bark tissue on one side, and wood tissue on the other. Wood is familiar to everyone, but the thing to know about it here is that it is composed of dead cells (even in living trees) and that these cells, unlike the phloem, conduct water and dissolved salts upward from the roots.

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