All Topics  
Plant anatomy

 

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

Plant anatomy



 
 
Plant Anatomy or phytotomy is the general term for the study of the internal structure
Anatomy

Anatomy is a branch of biology that is the consideration of the body plan. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy ....
 of plants. While originally it included plant morphology
Plant morphology

Plant morphology is the general term for the study of the morphology of plants. This is usually considered distinct from plant anatomy, which is the study of the internal Anatomy of plants, especially at the microscopic level....
, which is the description of the physical form and external structure of plants, since the mid Twentieth Century the investigation of plant anatomy is considered a separate, distinct field, and refers to just the internal plant structures. Plant anatomy is now frequently investigated at the cellular level, and often involves the sectioning of tissues and microscopy
Microscopy

Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view samples or objects. There are three well-known branches of microscopy, optical microscopy, electron microscopy and scanning probe microscopy....
.

Flower anatomy
Calyx
Sepal

A sepal is a part of the flower of angiosperms . Sepals in a "typical" flower are green and lie under the more conspicuous petals. As a collective unit the sepals are called the Wiktionary:calyx, and the collection of petals is called the Wiktionary:corolla....
Corolla Androecium Gynoecium
Gynoecium

A gynoecium is the female reproductive part of a flower. The male counterpart is called an androecium. A gynoecium is composed of one or more pistils....
Leaf anatomy
Leaf anatomy
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
Stem anatomy
Stem structure
Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaf, inflorescence , conifer cones or other stems etc....
Fruit/Seed anatomy
Ovule
Ovule

Ovule literally means "small ovum." In seed plants, the ovule is the structure that gives rise to and contains the female reproductive cells. It consists of three parts: The integuments forming its outer layer, the nucellus , and the megaspore-derived female gametophyte in its center....
Seed structure
Seed

A seed is a small Plant embryogenesis plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some Food storage. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant....
Pericarp Accessory fruit
Accessory fruit

An accessory fruit, false fruit, spurious fruit, or pseudocarp is a fruit in which some or all of the flesh is derived not from the ovary but from some adjacent tissue....
Wood anatomy
Bark
BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
Cork Phloem
Phloem

In vascular plants, phloem is the living Biological tissue that carries organic nutrients , particularly sucrose, a sugar, to all parts of the plant where needed....
Vascular cambium
Vascular cambium

The vascular cambium is a lateral meristem in the vascular tissue of plants. The vascular cambium is the source of both the secondary xylem and the secondary phloem , and is located between these tissues in the stem and root....
Heartwood and sapwood
Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
branch collar
Branch collar

A branch collar is the attachment structure in woody plants that connects a branch to its parent branch or to the Trunk . The branch collar consists of overlapping Wood fibre....


Root anatomy
Root structure
Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant body that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial root or aerating ....


t 300 BCE Theophrastus
Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos Island, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics....
 wrote a number of plant treatises, only two of which survive.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Plant anatomy'
Start a new discussion about 'Plant anatomy'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Plant Anatomy or phytotomy is the general term for the study of the internal structure
Anatomy

Anatomy is a branch of biology that is the consideration of the body plan. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy ....
 of plants. While originally it included plant morphology
Plant morphology

Plant morphology is the general term for the study of the morphology of plants. This is usually considered distinct from plant anatomy, which is the study of the internal Anatomy of plants, especially at the microscopic level....
, which is the description of the physical form and external structure of plants, since the mid Twentieth Century the investigation of plant anatomy is considered a separate, distinct field, and refers to just the internal plant structures. Plant anatomy is now frequently investigated at the cellular level, and often involves the sectioning of tissues and microscopy
Microscopy

Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view samples or objects. There are three well-known branches of microscopy, optical microscopy, electron microscopy and scanning probe microscopy....
.

Structural divisions


Plant anatomy is sometimes divided into the following categories:
Flower anatomy
Calyx
Sepal

A sepal is a part of the flower of angiosperms . Sepals in a "typical" flower are green and lie under the more conspicuous petals. As a collective unit the sepals are called the Wiktionary:calyx, and the collection of petals is called the Wiktionary:corolla....
Corolla Androecium Gynoecium
Gynoecium

A gynoecium is the female reproductive part of a flower. The male counterpart is called an androecium. A gynoecium is composed of one or more pistils....
Leaf anatomy
Leaf anatomy
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
Stem anatomy
Stem structure
Plant stem

A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant. The stem is normally divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes hold buds which grow into one or more leaf, inflorescence , conifer cones or other stems etc....
Fruit/Seed anatomy
Ovule
Ovule

Ovule literally means "small ovum." In seed plants, the ovule is the structure that gives rise to and contains the female reproductive cells. It consists of three parts: The integuments forming its outer layer, the nucellus , and the megaspore-derived female gametophyte in its center....
Seed structure
Seed

A seed is a small Plant embryogenesis plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some Food storage. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant....
Pericarp Accessory fruit
Accessory fruit

An accessory fruit, false fruit, spurious fruit, or pseudocarp is a fruit in which some or all of the flesh is derived not from the ovary but from some adjacent tissue....
Wood anatomy
Bark
BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
Cork Phloem
Phloem

In vascular plants, phloem is the living Biological tissue that carries organic nutrients , particularly sucrose, a sugar, to all parts of the plant where needed....
Vascular cambium
Vascular cambium

The vascular cambium is a lateral meristem in the vascular tissue of plants. The vascular cambium is the source of both the secondary xylem and the secondary phloem , and is located between these tissues in the stem and root....
Heartwood and sapwood
Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
branch collar
Branch collar

A branch collar is the attachment structure in woody plants that connects a branch to its parent branch or to the Trunk . The branch collar consists of overlapping Wood fibre....


Root anatomy
Root structure
Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant body that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial root or aerating ....


History

About 300 BCE Theophrastus
Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos Island, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics....
 wrote a number of plant treatises, only two of which survive. He developed concepts of plant morphology and classification, which did not withstand the scientific scrutiny of the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
.

A Swiss physician and botanist, Gaspard Bauhin
Gaspard Bauhin

Gaspard Bauhin, or Caspar Bauhin , was a Switzerland botanist who wrote Pinax theatri botanici , which described thousands of plants and classified them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later binomial nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus....
, introduced binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature

In biology, binomial nomenclature is the formal system of naming species. The system is called binominal nomenclature , binary nomenclature , or the binomial classification system....
 into plant taxonomy
Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word comes from the Greek language ', taxis and ', nomos .Taxonomies, or taxonomic schemes, are composed of taxonomic units known as taxa , or kinds of things that are arranged frequently in a hierarchical structure....
. He published Pinax theatri botanici in 1596, which was the first to use this convention for naming of species. His criteria for classification included natural relationships, or 'affinities', which in many cases were structural.

Italian doctor and microscopist, Marcello Malpighi
Marcello Malpighi

Marcello Malpighi was an Italy doctor, who gave his name to several physiological features....
, was one of the two founders of plant anatomy. In 1671 he published his Anatomia Plantarum, the first major advance in plant physiogamy since Aristotle.

The British doctor, Nehemiah Grew
Nehemiah Grew

Nehemiah Grew was an England vegetable anatomy and physiologist.Grew was the only son of Obadiah Grew , Nonconformist divine and vicar of St Michaels, Coventry, and was born in Warwickshire....
 was one of the two founders of plant anatomy. He published An Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants in 1672 and The Anatomy of Plants in 1682. Grew is credited with the recognition of plant cells, although he called them 'vesicles' and 'bladders'. He correctly identified and described the sexual organs of plants (flowers) and their parts.

In the Eighteenth Century, Carolus Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
 established taxonomy based on structure, and his early work was with plant anatomy. While the exact structural level which is to be considered to be scientifically valid for comparison and differentiation has changed with the growth of knowledge, the basic principles were established by Linnaeus. He published his master work, Species Plantarum in 1753.

In 1802, French botanist, Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel, published Traité d'anatomie et de physiologie végétale (Treatise on Plant Anatomy and Physiology) establishing the beginnings of the science of plant cytology
Cell biology

Cell biology is an list of academic disciplines that studies cell s ? their physiology properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their cell cycle, cell division and apoptosis....
.

In 1812, Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer
Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer

Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer was a Germany botanist who made a number of important discoveries in plant anatomy.He was born in Hamburg, the son of a minister, and started out studying theology and the classics....
 published Beyträge zur Anatomie der Pflanzen, describing microscopic studies of plant tissues.

In 1813 a Swiss botanist, Augustin Pyrame de Candolle, published Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, in which he argued that plant anatomy, not physiology, ought to be the sole basis for plant classification. Using a scientific basis, he established structural criteria for defining and separating plant genera.

In 1830, Franz Meyen
Franz Meyen

Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen was a Germany physician and botanist.Meyen was born in Tilsit. In 1830 he wrote Phytotomie, the first review of plant anatomy....
 published Phytotomie, the first comprehensive review of plant anatomy.

In 1838 German botanist, Matthias Jakob Schleiden
Matthias Jakob Schleiden

File:Schleiden.JPGMatthias Jakob Schleiden was a Germany botanist and co-founder of the cell theory, along with Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow....
, published Contributions to Phytogenesis, stating, "the lower plants all consist of one cell, while the higher plants are composed of (many) individual cells" thus confirming and continuing Mirabel's work.

A German-Polish botanist, Eduard Strasburger
Eduard Strasburger

Eduard Adolf Strasburger was a Poland-Germany professor who was one of the most famous botanists of the 19th century.He was born in Warsaw, Poland, son of Edward Bogumil Strasburger ....
, described the mitotic process in plant cells and further demonstrated that new cell nuclei can only arise from the division of other pre-existing nuclei. His Studien über Protoplasma was published in 1876.

Gottlieb Haberlandt
Gottlieb Haberlandt

Gottlieb Haberlandt was an Austrian botanist.Haberlandt first pointed out the possibilities of the culture of isolated tissues . He suggested that the potentialities of individual cells via tissue culture and also suggested that the reciprocal influences of tissues on one another could be determined by this method....
, a German botanist, studied plant physiology and classified plant tissue based upon function. On this basis, in 1884 he published Physiologische Pflanzenanatomie (Physiological Plant Anatomy) in which he described twelve types of tissue systems (absorptive, mechanical, photosynthetic, etc.).

British paleobotanists Dunkinfield Henry Scott
Dunkinfield Henry Scott

Dunkinfield Henry Scott was an England paleobotanist, a leading authority on the Plant anatomy of fossil plants. He published his On the structure and affinities of fossil plants from the Palaeozoic rocks in 1897....
 and William Crawford Williamson
William Crawford Williamson

William Crawford Williamson was an England natural history and palaeobotanist.Williamson was born at Scarborough, North Yorkshire. His father, John Williamson, after beginning life as a gardener, became a well-known local naturalist, who, in conjunction with William Bean, first explored the rich fossiliferous beds of the Yorkshire coast....
 described the structures of fossilized plants at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Scott's Studies in Fossil Botany was published in 1900.

Following Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin Royal Society was an English people natural history who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolution over time from common descent, through the process he called natural selection....
's Origin of Species a Canadian botanist, Edward Charles Jeffrey, who was studying the comparative anatomy and phylogeny of different vascular plant groups, applied the theory to plants using the form and structure of plants to establish a number of evolutionary lines. He published his The Anatomy of Woody Plants in 1917.

The growth of comparative plant anatomy was spearheaded by a British botanist, Agnes Arber
Agnes Arber

Agnes Robertson Arber was a renowned United Kingdom plant morphologist and anatomist, historian of botany and philosopher of biology. She was born in London but lived most of her life in Cambridge, including the last 51 years of her life....
. She published Water Plants: A Study of Aquatic Angiosperms in 1920, Monocotyledons: A Morphological Study in 1925, and The Gramineae: A Study of Cereal, Bamboo and Grass in 1934.

Following World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, Katherine Esau
Katherine Esau

Katherine Esau was a Germany-United States botanist.She was born in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire to a family of Mennonites of German descent....
 published, Plant Anatomy (1953), which became the definitive textbook on plant structure in North American universities and elsewhere, it was still in print as of 2006. She followed up with her Anatomy of seed plants in 1960.

See also

  • Plant morphology
    Plant morphology

    Plant morphology is the general term for the study of the morphology of plants. This is usually considered distinct from plant anatomy, which is the study of the internal Anatomy of plants, especially at the microscopic level....
  • Plant physiology
    Plant physiology

    Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the function, or physiology, of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology , plant ecology , phytochemistry , cell biology, and molecular biology....


External links