Plant Morphology Quiz

Phytomorphology is the study of the physical form and external structure of plants, while plant anatomy is the study of the internal structure of plants. Plant morphology is useful in the visual identification of plants, and recent studies in molecular biology have investigated the molecular processes involved in determining the conservation and diversification of plant morphologies. Plant morphology has four major areas of investigation, and each overlaps with another field of the biological sciences. These areas include comparative morphology, vegetative and reproductive structures, plant structure at a range of scales, and the pattern of development. A plant morphologist makes comparisons between structures in many different plants of the same or different species, and this tackles the question of why the structures are similar. When structures in different species are believed to exist and develop as a result of common, inherited genetic pathways, those structures are termed homologous, while those that exist and develop as a result of common adaptive responses to environmental pressure are termed convergent. Plant morphology treats both the vegetative structures of plants, as well as the reproductive structures. The detailed study of reproductive structures in plants led to the discovery of the alternation of generations, found in all plants and most algae. Plants exhibit natural variation in their form and structure, and there are three primary causes of this variation: positional effects, environmental effects, and juvenility. Finally, transcription factors and transcriptional regulatory networks play key roles in plant morphogenesis and their evolution.Plant Morphology: Key Concepts and Innovations

• At freezing temperatures, intercellular ice formation can occur in plant tissues, causing freeze-drying and dehydration of the cells.
• The hardiness of boreal conifers is enhanced by the extraorgan freezing in shoot and floral primordia.
• Juvenile plants differ from adult plants in terms of the organs and tissues they produce, a phenomenon known as juvenility or heteroblasty.
• Rolf Sattler has revised the concept of homology to include partial and quantitative homology, leading to a continuum morphology that demonstrates a continuum between root, shoot, stem, leaf, and hair.
• Recent studies have shown that plant architectures optimize a very common network design tradeoff based on the environment and the species.
• The continuum approach to plant morphology is known as Fuzzy Arberian Morphology or FAM, which is supported by morphological and molecular genetic evidence.
• Process morphology describes and analyzes the dynamic continuum of plant form, which overcomes the structure/process dichotomy.
• Classical morphology, continuum morphology, and process morphology are relevant to plant evolution and plant evo-devo, which integrates plant morphology and plant molecular genetics.
• Morphological research is influenced by philosophical assumptions such as either/or logic, fuzzy logic, structure/process dualism, or its transcendence.
• Kaplan's Principles of Plant Morphology is a well-illustrated volume of 1305 pages that presents a wealth of morphological data, but it only interprets the data in terms of classical morphology and the qualitative homology concept.
• Including continuum and process morphology as well as molecular genetics would provide an enlarged scope.
• Philosophy of plant morphology studies the interactions between philosophy and empirical findings in morphological research.