For gardeners planning and caring for their plants, knowing the difference between annuals, perennials, and biennials is essential.
What is the difference between annual, perennial and biennial plants? Here is a distinction between the three.
The main differences are the number of years they live, how many times they reproduce, as well as some aesthetic differences. Annuals last for a year, perennials last many years and biennials last for two.
What Is An Annual Plant?
Annual plants (or annuals for short) have a life cycle (from seed to seed and then die) of just one year. You usually plant annuals outdoors in pots, garden beds, or other outdoor areas on your property. Most often they are herbaceous plants or tropical plants that will die once winter comes around.
A herbaceous plant has no woody tissue (as opposed to a woody plant). Simply put, herbaceous plants have flexible stems. Woody plants are trees and shrubs. Herbaceous plants are poppies, zinnias, and so on.
A tropical plant is a plant that is native to areas between tropical latitudes (in a tropical area).
What Is A Perennial Plant?
Perennials (also called perennial plants) survive many years, growing more roots, flowers, and leaves each year. They often survive very cold winters by becoming dormant (slowing down or stopping normal plant activity) so that they may reemerge the next growing season.
Commonly, in gardening and landscaping parlance, “perennial” means herbaceous plants (even though annual and biennial plants are herbaceous too).
What Is A Biennial Plant?
Biennial plants (also known as biennials) are plants with a two-year lifespan. Vegetative growth typically occurs in the first year, followed by the production of flowers and seeds in the following year. So, they aren’t perennials, or even annuals.
Differences Between Annual, Perennial, And Biennial Plants
Perennial, annual, and biennial plants have a few things in common- their lifespans, physiology, and other characteristics.
Let’s start with their lifespans and seasons.
Their Lifespans And Reproductive Cycles
Perennials, biennials, and annuals differ according to lifespan and seasonal patterns. To briefly touch on the specifics…
Perennial plants in non-tropical countries have a yearly growing period, a flowering period, and then they either die or retreat to a dormant state for a period of time. Longer lifespan, specific seasons for flowering, for dormancy.
Annual plants have seed germination (when the plant “comes out” from its seed), vegetative growth (the growing process through their vegetative cells and tissues), flowering, then onto death within a year.
Shorter lifespan, but make up for it by constantly producing flowers or growing so quickly it’s all compressed together.
Biennials have a two yearly cycle, which consists of seed germination, the first vegetative growth, dormancy, second vegetative growth and foloower, then death. Two-year lifespan consisting of focus on root and stem growth, then one of flowering, seeding, then death.
Physical Traits
Perennial plants often contain dead leaves from the previous year like lavender or Hakone grass, whereas annuals have no previous season, how much longer will they bloom for? From April or May until September/October. But honestly the best way to tell them apart is learning each plants quality independently.
Also consider Time of year; many plants are leafless in winter, only annual plants can be seen from May to November.
Similarities Between Annual, Perennial, And
Biennial Plants
All annual, perennial, and biennial plants have the same life cycle of seed germinating, growing, reproducing, and dying. All of them need nutrients in the soil and direct or indirect sun for their primary source of energy.
Are Annual Plants Ever Perennial Or Biennial Plants And Vice Versa?
Depending upon where you live, some plants that we will generally consider one type will actually we considered another type, usually vice versa. Lavender, for instance, is usually a perennial plant. You can think of the plant as an annual when you plant them in a pot with a mandevilla or potato vine to grow next to.
In special situations, perennial or even woody plants ie. a spirea bush ( which means perennial bush ) would not survive the winter, thus bringing it into the category of plants that live year-long i.e. an annual.
This combination of terms might have seemed hazy to you earlier, since one sometimes calls an annual plant perennials, in anticipation of plants surviving only one year. Hey just hanging out while it lasts!
We commonly know all herbaceous plants as annuals, perrenials and biennials. While you may consider trees and shrubs, perrenials, or annuals, tropical evergreen annuals like palmbirds of paradise will not last through Active Winter unless you keep them indoors protected. It’s a question of climate region and also that of the plant!
What Are Some Good Plant Combinations?
The finest pairings involve those plants that are not annuals to annuals or a perennial to a perennial, but those that have the same demands regarding spacing, light, or watering.
For example, I enjoy placing coleus (an annual) at the back of my flower bed and coral bells (a perennial) in front of them. The coleus gets tall pretty quickly, the coral bells remain pretty wee. They like part shade or that full shade thing and about the same watering depending on your soil, so they compliment each just right.
That said, be artful in your combination of plants.
Are There More Plant Types Than These?
Yes. There are indoor plants, those adorable little sets of bulbs, evergreens, trees, shrubs. The categories sometimes cross each other, though.
A lovely bird of paradise evergreen (and tropical pretty all the things) is definitely that, and it would be classified by that gardener as perennial, perennially supposed to stay in the ground for more than one year.
But if you leave that poor thing out in a planted and forgotten pot just wilting in the atmosphere, then sorry about the outcome, because that plant will not survive one winter comes (at least in the northern part of U.S.). So it’s actually basically an annual.
Some bulbs will come back every year, like tulips, and then again, not so much. For practical purposes, planters of lovely grass, flowers, plants, horticulturalists (that’s someone who has made a job of plants by practicing horticulture), would consider them either somehow annual or bulb propagated.
A bulb is part of that plant that stores plant food, down at the bottom of it, and that all necessary preparation for resuming upward growth and life after being dormant entirely through winter (thus, “bulb propagated,” propagating or growing a whole new plant from a part a bulb).
More important than breaking it down to exclusive small groups is to have fun and take a creative approach; stop worrying about the subtleties of division classes. But also do know your plants and flowers, and take care they safe and flourish in your garden!
Final Thoughts
Getting into the world of plants is a scary undertaking given the use of all that scientific town talk garden in horticulture, and things described here are just the tip of the iceberg, that should be miles from iceberg status and all.
However, with good direction and hard work you will come to better understand what is like and not. And of course, it’s all right to consult that horticulturist or skilled landscaper!