Bark (botany)

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines, and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner bark, which in older stems is living tissue, includes the innermost area of the periderm. The outer bark in older stems includes the dead tissue on the surface of the stems, along with parts of the innermost periderm and all the tissues on the outer side of the periderm. The outer bark on trees which lies external to the last formed periderm is also called the rhytidome.

Products derived from bark include: bark shingle siding and wall coverings,spices and other flavorings, tanbark for tannin, resin, latex, medicines, poisons, various hallucinogenic chemicals and cork. Bark has been used to make cloth, canoes, and ropes and used as a surface for paintings and map making. A number of plants are also grown for their attractive or interesting bark colorations and surface textures or their bark is used as landscape mulch.

What is commonly called bark includes a number of different tissues. Cork is an external, secondary tissue that is impermeable to water and gases, and is also called the phellem. The cork is produced by the cork cambium which is a layer of meristematically active cells which serve as a lateral meristem for the periderm. The cork cambium, which is also called the phellogen, is normally only one cell layer thick and it divides periclinally to the outside producing cork. The phelloderm, which is not always present in all barks, is a layer of cells formed by and interior to the cork cambium. Together, the phellem (cork), phellogen (cork cambium) and phelloderm constitute the periderm.

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