The growth of the vascular plant depends upon the activity of meristems, which are, in a sense, always embryonic. Continued indefinitely, this mode of growth could mean immortality; indeed, the longest lived individual organisms ever to have existed on earth have been certain species of trees. Plants and plant parts, however, do die, and death is often not the consequence of accident or environmental stress but of physiological decline—aging, or senescence.

Various kinds of physiological senescence and death occur and may affect particular cells, tissues, organs, or the whole plant. In the formation of the vessels of the xylem, cells conclude their differentiation by dying and contribute their empty walls to the conducting tissue. Individual organs such as leaves usually have a limited life span. Entire shoot systems may gradually die back in the aerial parts of perennial plants, which overwinter underground. And, finally, the whole plant may die after a limited period of growth and the completion of reproduction. This behaviour is found in many annual plants, which complete their life cycle in a single growing season. The life span may extend to two years, as in biennial plants, or longer, as in banana and certain bamboos, which die after flowering and fruiting.

In the examples cited above, the death of cells, organs, or individual plants appears to be “programmed” and, in some sense, adaptive. This is clearly so with the death of individual cells during differentiation, when residual products contribute to the effective function of the entire plant body. The death of leaves and of shoot systems is part of the plant’s adaptation to the cycle of the seasons. In annual species, the death of the whole individual may be viewed in a similar way. The succession of generations in this case is carried on by seeds; the sacrifice of the parent plant may, in fact, contribute to the success of the seedling by making available to the seed a pool of reserves derived from the breakdown of parent tissues.

Certain features characterize the onset of senescence. The cells show degenerative changes often associated with the accumulation of breakdown products. Metabolic changes accompany the degeneration. Respiration may increase for a period, but the rate ultimately declines as the cellular apparatus degenerates. Synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids ceases, and, in some instances, disintegration of cells has been associated with the release of enzymes through the disruption of membrane-bounded bodies called lysosomes.

The death of individual cells in tissues such as the xylem appears to be governed by internal factors, but senescence often depends upon interaction of tissues and organs. The presence of young developing leaves often accelerates the aging of older leaves; removal of the younger leaves retards the senescence of the older ones, suggesting control by competition for nutrients. A similar effect is seen in annual plants, in which the development of fruits and seeds is associated with the senescence and, ultimately, the death of the rest of the plant; the removal of reproductive structures slows the rate of aging. In these instances competition obviously has some effect, but it does not sufficiently explain why older, mature organs suffer in competition with those still in active development. The link may lie partly in the capacity of developing organs to draw nutrients to themselves, even from older parts of the plant. Developing organs thus provide “sinks” toward which nutrients tend to move. The senescence of organs drained in this way could result from the progressive loss of certain key constituents; should leaf protein, for example, turn over by breakdown of proteins to their amino acid constituents and then be resynthesized, a steady drain of amino acids from the leaf would progressively deplete the proteins in the leaf.

“Sinks” can be only part of the explanation, however, for in detached leaves of plants such as tobacco, protein synthesis decreases, and protein content falls, while the amino acid content actually rises. Senescence in such instances can hardly depend on the withdrawal of nutrients. Furthermore, leaf senescence can be retarded locally by the application of cytokinins, hormones that stimulate plant cell division. Parallel effects have been demonstrated with growth substances of the auxin type in other plant systems. In the same way that active buds and fruits form sinks for nutrients from elsewhere in the plant, a cytokinin-treated area of a leaf attracts nutrients from other parts of the leaf. Although the metabolism of isolated leaves may differ in many respects from that of attached leaves, leaf senescence probably does not result only from nutrient drainage but also from the synthetic activity of leaf tissues, which may be under hormonal control from other parts of the plant. The root may be important, for roots are known to export cytokinins to the shoot.

Environmental factors, primarily photoperiod (daily length of darkness) and temperature, play important parts in governing senescence and death in plants. In annual plants, death is the natural conclusion of development; thus, conditions accelerating development automatically advance senescence. This is readily seen in short-day plants, in which precocious reproduction upon exposure to long dark periods is followed by early death. Senescence may be retarded in these cases, however, by hormonal treatments of the kind known to delay degeneration and death in detached leaves. Competition for nutrients between vegetative and reproductive structures cannot be the primary cause of death, for, in species such as hemp, the male plants—which do not produce seeds—die earlier than the females under short-day (long-night) conditions.

In perennial plants, leaf fall is associated with approaching winter dormancy. In many trees leaf senescence is brought about by declining day length and falling temperature toward the end of the growing season. Chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants, is lost; yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids become more conspicuous; and, in some species, anthocyanin pigments accumulate. These changes are responsible for the autumn colours of leaves. There are some indications that day length may control leaf senescence in deciduous trees through its effect on hormone metabolism, for both gibberellins and auxins have been shown to retard leaf fall and to preserve the greenness of leaves under the short-day conditions of autumn.

From the foregoing it may be seen that senescence and death are important in the general economy of plants. The paradox that death contributes to survival is resolved when it is understood that the death of the part contributes to the better adaptation of the whole—whether organ, individual, or species. Viewed in this way, death is no more than another—albeit the ultimate—manifestation of development.