Monocots: More on Morphology - Monocots and Dicots

Monocots: More on Morphology
Museum of Paleontology
University of California

Monocots differ from other flowering plants in a number of features.
Almost every basic botany course includes a unit in which dicot and monocot characters are compared. If you have not been through such a course, or if it has been a while since then, you may wish to view our page comparing monocots and dicots. The difficulty is that most of these characters are neither unique to monocots nor universally present among the members. This is because of the simple fact that plants do not evolve to fit the neat categories we create for them. This does not mean that such characters cannot be useful in recognizing monocots, but it does mean that no one character will always work -- it is best to compare on a number of features.

Please visit the web site for photographs and to learn more.