Abstract
DURING the past few years, rain trees (Samanea saman (Jacqu.) Merr.) in and about Calcutta are dying in numbers. Some of these trees growing in the Indian Botanic Garden, Calcutta, were found heavily infected by lac insects, Laccifer lacca (Kerr). Infected branches of these plants bear highly pinnate leaves. The shape, size, number and thickness of leaflets in individual leaves of infected plants are markedly different from those of normal plants (Figs. 1 and 2). The size and appearance of complete leaves in infected plants are also different from those in normal plants. Usually the leaflets in infected plants are of different degrees of ovate shape with variously acute opposite ends. The normal leaflets are broadly obovate to very broadly obovate. For describing these leaflets, the terminologies proposed by the Systematics Association Committee1 have been used.
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References
Systematics Association Committee for Descriptive Biological Terminology II, Terminology of Simple Symmetrical Plane Shapes (Chart 1), Taxon, 11, 145 (1962).
Ashby, E., New Phytol., 47, 153 (1948).
Wardlaw, C. W., Phylogeny and Morphogenesis (Macmillan and Co., Ltd., London, 1952).
Jones, H., in The Growth of Leaves, edit. by Milthorpe, F. L., 93 (Butterworth Sci. Publ., London, 1956).
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SEN, J., BASU, S. Variated Leaf Shape of Infected Plants of Samanea saman (Jacqu.) Merr.. Nature 198, 103 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1038/198103a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/198103a0
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