Venation

Venation is the arrangement of veins, as in a leaf or in the wing of an insect. Patterns of venation in insect wings are often used to identify and differentiate species. In angiosperm plants, the venation of eudicot and magnoliid leaves is generally netted or reticulate, with smaller veins branching out from larger ones in a pinnate or palmate pattern, while that of monocots is parallel, with many veins of similar size running parallel to each other along the length of the plant part. These parallel veins are connected to each other by much smaller cross veins.