Pappus (botany) pappus function as a "parachute" which enables the seed to be carried by the wind. The name derives from the Ancient Greek word "pappos", Latin "pappus", meaning "old man", so used for a plant (assumed to be an "Erigeron" species) having bristles and also for the woolly, hairy seed of certain plants. Pappus (botany) The pappus is the modified calyx, the part of an individual floret, that surrounds the base of the corolla tube in flower heads of the plant family Asteraceae. The term is sometimes used in other plant families such as Asclepiadaceae (milkweeds), whose seeds have a similar
Plant life-form or tree. Conversely, unrelated species may share a life-form through convergent evolution. While taxonomic classification is concerned with the production of natural classifications (being natural understood either in philosophical basis for pre-evolutionary thinking, or phylogenetically as non-polyphyletic), plant-life form classifications uses other criteria than naturalness, like morphology, physiology and ecology. "Life-form" and "growth-form" are essentially synonymous concepts, despite attempts to restrict the meaning of growth-form to types differing in shoot architecture. Most life form schemes are concerned with vascular plants only. "Plant construction types" may be used in a broader sense to encompass "planktophytes", "benthophytes" (mainly algae) and terrestrial plants.