section_path: Microanatomy/Bronchial airways
section_name: Bronchial airways
paragraph_text: Bronchial airways
  
  In the bronchi there are incomplete tracheal rings of cartilage and smaller plates of cartilage that keep them open. Bronchioles are too narrow to support cartilage and their walls are of smooth muscle, and this is largely absent in the narrower respiratory bronchioles which are mainly just of epithelium. The absence of cartilage in the terminal bronchioles gives them an alternative name of membranous bronchioles.