THE CONCEPTS ON WHICH A MORPHOLOGY OF THE VASCULAR PLANTS SHOULD BE BASED

Abstract

It can hardly be denied that the expression “General Plant Morphology”, which is so often met with in botanical textbooks, has little or no meaning. A general morphology of the Plant Kingdom would have to occupy itself with those morphological features that are common to all groups of plants, which means that it would have to confine itself to the common features of the cell structure and eventually to such peculiarities as are independent of the uni- or pluricellular structure of the plant body, e.g. its enclosure within a rigid envelop. However, when we realize that there is in this respect no fundamental difference between the common features of plants and animals or, at least, of some groups of animals it will be clear that the use of the expression “General Plant Morphology” is misleading and should be avoided. What in most botanical textbooks is understood by “General Morphology” is not a morphology of the whole Plant Kingdom but only of a part of it; however, the delimitation of this part, and this is a most astounding feature, is but seldom explicitly indicated, and, moreover, proves to vary, sometimes even in different chapters of the same work. Most textbook-writers seem to agree that Algae and Fungi have a morphology of their own, and that the latter should be left to specialists in these fields; they accordingly restrict their attention either to the Embryophyta, i.e. the group which comprises the Bryophyta and the Vascular Plants, or to the Vascular Plants alone.