IB Biology Sub-topic C3.1 Notes

You previously learned how water and solutes move through xylem and phloem. The circulation of these is incredibly important to sustain plant cell metabolism and growth, especially because they endlessly grow.

Whilst human cells continually undergo mitosis to growth this stops sometime after puberty. After this, stem cells divide by mitosis to replace cells that have died or been sloughed off. Therefore, humans have a definite size limit and thus undergo determinate growth.

On the other hand, plant cells carefully organize their cells so that some remain pluripotent stem cells and can continue to grow the stems and roots out. Therefore, plants have an indefinite size limit and thus undergo indeterminate growth.