Elsewhere in this site we'll see that all
members of the class of flowering plants belong to one of two subclasses: They're either monocots
or dicots. It can be fun, and illuminating, to note the differences between monocot
and dicot leaves.
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 Dicots include nearly all our trees, bushes,
vegetable-garden plants (not corn), and most of our wildflowers (not irises and lilies).
Dicot leaves are usually net-veined, as in the close-up of the veins in a wild
grape leaf at the right. The heavy dark lines are the mid vein and secondary veins, while
the thinner, lighter lines are the tertiary and smaller veins. The white spots with
black centers, by the way, are disease spots caused by fungi. In nature, you just can't
look closely at one thing without running into something else entirely different, and just
as interesting!
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 Monocots include all grasses and glasslike
plants, plus lilies, irises, amaryllises, and some other plant types. Usually, but not
always, monocots possess parallel-veined leaves, as typified in the simple blade of
grass shown at the right. One example of a monocot which does not have parallel-veined
leaves is the Trillium, several species of which are common in moist American forests.
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