Question 6
Besides vegetative reproduction, what other two tasks do underground stems carry out?
The right answer is the one marked above.
Storing food and surviving an unfavourable season. The second explains the first — a plant that must sit out a dry period loses everything above ground, so it packs a store below it and restarts from that store.
There is no light underground, which rules out photosynthesis. Absorbing water and anchoring are the jobs of roots — and underground stems are stems, not roots, however much they look the part.