An oil body is a lipid

Lipid

Lipids constitute a broad group of naturally occurring molecules that include fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins , monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, phospholipids, and others...

-containing structure found in plant cells. The term can refer to at least two distinct kinds of structures in different kinds of plants.

Oil bodies in liverworts

Liverwort

Marchantiophyta

The Marchantiophyta are a division of bryophyte plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like other bryophytes, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information....

 oil bodies are structures unique to liverworts that contain isoprenoid

Terpenoid

The terpenoids , sometimes called isoprenoids, are a large and diverse class of naturally occurring organic chemicals similar to terpenes, derived from five-carbon isoprene units assembled and modified in thousands of ways. Most are multicyclic structures that differ from one another not only in...

 essential oil

Essential oil

An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils or aetherolea, or simply as the "oil of" the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove...

s and are surrounded by a single membrane. The size, shape, color, and number of oil bodies per cell is characteristic of certain species and may be used to identify these.

Oil bodies in vascular plants

Some species of vascular plants also contain intracellular structures called oil bodies. Vascular plant oil bodies consist mainly of triacylglycerols

Triglyceride

A triglyceride is an ester derived from glycerol and three fatty acids. There are many triglycerides, depending on the oil source, some are highly unsaturated, some less so....

 surrounded by a layer consisting of phospholipid

Phospholipid

Phospholipids are a class of lipids that are a major component of all cell membranes as they can form lipid bilayers. Most phospholipids contain a diglyceride, a phosphate group, and a simple organic molecule such as choline; one exception to this rule is sphingomyelin, which is derived from...

s and the protein oleosin

Oleosin

Oleosins are structural proteins found in vascular plant oil bodies and found in plant cells. Oil bodies are not considered organelles because they have a single layer membrane and lack the pre-requisite double layer membrane in order to be considered an organelle...

. These oil bodies occur largely in seeds but also occur in other plant parts, including leaves.

Gallery

Microscopic views of liverwort cells, showing a variety of oil body shapes and arrangements.