CoachMany plants can also make new plants directly from a piece of themselves — no spores, no seeds, one parent only. This is vegetative reproduction. The new plant is a living continuation of the old one, and resembles it exactly.
Examples
Example 24.6 (The strawberry’s runners)
A strawberry plant sends out long thin horizontal stems — runners — across the soil. Where a runner touches down, it roots, sprouts leaves, and becomes a complete new strawberry plant; the runner then withers, and the child stands free. One plant becomes a patch without a single seed sown.
Example 24.7 (Bulbs and tubers)
The tulip bulb and the potato tuber are underground storerooms — and starting kits. Left in the ground, a bulb splits into daughter bulbs, each a future tulip; every “eye” of a sprouting potato can grow into a whole new plant. Gardeners plant potatoes, not potato seeds.