Shoot Morphology of the Climbing Fern Lygodium (Schizaeaceae): General Organography, Leaf Initiation, and Branching
- 1 September 1982
- journal article
- research article
- Published by University of Chicago Press in Botanical Gazette
- Vol. 143 (3), 319-330
- https://doi.org/10.1086/337306
Abstract
The leaves of the climbing fern Lygodium are borne on the dorsal surface of a subterranean rhizome and undergo a twining growth to form the aerial portion of the shoot. These leaves have a number of structural and functional analogies to the entire shoot of some twining flowering plants: continuous apical growth, circumnutation, a delay in leaflet expansion below the leaf apex and budlike resting leaflet apices. The development of the shoot system of L. japonicum (Thunb.) Sw. and L. microphyllum (Cav.) R. Br. was investigated to determine their organographic relationships. The determinate primary leaves and the indeterminate climbing leaves initiate from a single cell on the flank of the apical meristem and are strictly foliar in nature, structurally homologous with each other and with the leaves of other ferns. Dichotomous branching occurs in a manner undocumented for this genus. The shoot of Lygodium is an extreme example of the phenomenon of leaf elaboration common to many ferns. The complex nature of the leaves and simple morphology of the stem indicate a specialization of function within the shoot rather than the retention of a primitive, poorly differentiated organography.This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Developmental studies on the leaf and the extra-axillary bud ofHistiopteris incisaJournal of Plant Research, 1980
- On the Stem Apex, Leaf Initiation and Early Leaf Ontogeny in Filicalean FernsAmerican Journal of Botany, 1977
- Origin and Early Morphogenesis of Lateral Buds in the Fern DavalliaAmerican Journal of Botany, 1976
- The Morphology and Anatomy of Lygodium japonicumAmerican Journal of Botany, 1936