Abscission

Abscission (from the Latin ab meaning away and scindere meaning to cut) is the shedding of a body part. It most commonly refers to the process by which a plant drops one or more of its parts, such as a leaf, fruit, flower or seed, though the term is also used to describe the shedding of a claw by an animal^[which?], and is also the word used to describe the separation of daughter cells at the end of cytokinesis, a process that generally begins immediately following mitotic telophase.

Function

A plant will abscise a part either to discard a member that is no longer necessary, such as a leaf during autumn, or a flower following fertilisation, or for the purposes of reproduction. Most deciduous plants drop their leaves by abscission before winter, while evergreen plants continuously abscise their leaves. Another form of abscission is fruit drop, when a plant abscises fruit while still immature, in order to conserve resources needed to bring the remaining fruit to maturity. If a leaf is damaged a plant may also abscise it to conserve water or photosynthetic efficiency, depending on the 'costs' to the plant as a whole. The abscission layer is a greenish grayish color.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf

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