Pattern of morphological variety of angeospermous pollen aperture distribution and natural ordering of biological variety, or – what is a variety (problems of description and interpretation)

Abstract

Beside typical pollen forms with symmetrical aperture arrangement, various deviant forms with less symmetrical arrangements have been observed in remote Angiospermous taxa. The pollen forms may be arranged in the continuous, geometrically regular and taxonomically unspecific transformational series. Continuous and regular pattern of the variety obtained can not be described by any way of the classification without complete destroying of the unity of this pattern due to the typological procedures (discretization). The paradox is considered: the variety described consists of discrete pollen grains (as the biological variety consists of mortal living bodies) i.e. has the discrete pattern, but the variety of pollen morphological characteristics have the continuous pattern. Problems of description of the pattern of the biological variety and ways of interpretation are discussed.