Video narration
When you look at a corn leaf and a sunflower leaf, what do their veins tell you? In corn, the veins run side by side; in sunflower, they branch into a net. Corn is a monocot; sunflower is a dicot. The names refer to whether the seed begins with one seed leaf or two-not to two different kinds of plant cell. The real difference is a pattern in how tissues are arranged. In a typical monocot leaf, the inner tissue looks fairly even. A dicot leaf often has an upper layer and an airy lower layer. Look at a stem cut across, too: a monocot's transport bundles are scattered through the stem, while a dicot's are arranged in a ring. These are useful clues, not rules every plant follows exactly. So, corn is a monocot, typically with parallel veins; sunflower is a dicot, typically with a branching net.