Abstract
MR. H. HAMSHAW THOMAS'S paper entitled “The Old Morphology and the New”, read before the Linnean Society on November 10, created considerable interest. In recent years, Mr. Thomas said, a great gulf has arisen between the classical concepts of plant morphology and the new ideas which have been suggested by a study of the modern pterido-phytes and of the older Palaeozoic floras. A century of botanical investigation has not strengthened the foundations of the old morphology, but its modern exponents on the Continent have been led to regard much of what is termed morphology as irrelevant, and they reject all considerations of phylogeny, as well as the studies oh the anatomy and cytology of plants. On the other hand, the foundations of the old system have been seriously shaken. Goethe, in a passage which has been generally overlooked, recognised the validity of some of the considerations of the new morphology, the name applied to the concepts put forward by Lignier, Bower, Tansley, and others. According to this view the body of the higher plants is derived from a thallus with forking branches bearing terminal sporangia; large leaves were derived from branch systems which may or may not have continued to bear sporangia. Thus the reproductive structures of the seed plants are to be considered as modified branches or branch systems rather than as modified foliar structures. The application of these ideas to the flowering plants may lead to considerable changes in our ideas of primitive characters. It is suggested that the flowering plants may be derived from the Palæozoic pteridosperms, and this leads to some new suggestions as to the morphology of modern floral structures.
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Plant Morphology. Nature 130, 770 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130770a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130770a0