Perennial

Perennial, in Botany, a term employed in contradistinction to Annual (q.v.) and Biennial (q.v.), to designate plants which subsist for a number of years. Some plants, however, which are annual in cold climates are perennial in warmer regions. The term perennial is in general applied only to herbaceous plants, and indicates a property only of their roots, the stems of most of them dying at the end of each summer. Perennial herbaceous plants, like shrubs and trees, are capable of producing flowers and fruit time after time, in which they differ from annual and biennial plants, which are fruitful only once. Those plants which are capable of being propagated by cloves, offset bulbs, or tubers are all perennial. Thus, the potato is a perennial plant, although the crop is planted in spring and reaped in autumn, like that of corn, whilst all the corn plants are annuals. There is great diversity in the duration of life of perennial plants.