Relating to or characteristic of plants that have two seed leaves (cotyledons) when they first sprout, like beans and maples.
From Greek 'di-' (two) + 'kotyledon' (cup-shaped cavity, the seed leaf). The term was coined in the 1600s as botanists classified flowering plants by their seed structure.
Dicots make up about a third of all flowering plants and include most of the plants we eat—wheat, rice, beans—and they have a completely different vascular system than monocots, which is why they grow so differently!
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