This bundle is continued down into the cortex of the stem as a leaf-trace, and passing very slowly through the sclernchymatous external cortex and the parenchymatous, starchy internal cortex to join the central cylinder.
Associated with it are other tissues, consisting of parenchyma, mainly starchy, and in the Phanerogams particularly, of special stereom.
As the aerial stem is traced down into the underground rhizome portion, these three mantles die out almost entirelythe central hydrom strand forming the bulk of the cylinder and its elements becoming mixed with thick-walled stereids; at the same time this central hydromstereom strand becomes three-lobed, with deep furrows between the lobes in which the few remaining leptoids run, separated from the central mass by a few starchy cells, the remains of the amylom sheath.
In Cat harinea undulata the central h drom cylinder of the aerial stem is a loose tissue, its interstices being filled up with thin-walled, starchy parenchyma.
Besides this there is usually a living conducting tissue, sometimes differentiated as leptom, forming a mantle round the hydrom, and bounded externally by a more or less well-differentiated endodermis, abutting on an irregularly cylindrical lacuna; the latter separates the central conducting cylinder from the cortex of the seta, which, like the cortex of the gametophyte stem, is usually differentiated into an outer thick-walled stereom and an inner starchy parenchyma.