Ligament · Foot

Plantar plates of the toes

The foot's version of the finger's palmar plate — a dense fibrocartilage pad forming the underside of each joint at the ball of the foot and of the smaller joints beyond it. It is built the same way, firmly fixed to the base of the toe and loosely to the neck of the metatarsal so it can slide as the toe moves, and it blends at its sides into the collateral ligaments and into the deep transverse ligament that ties the plates of the four lesser toes together. The difference is what is asked of it: the plate under a metatarsal head lies directly between the bone and the ground, so it is a weight-bearing structure in a way the hand's equivalent never is, and it carries that load in the extended toe position where the collateral ligaments beside it have gone slack.