Morphological Description of Plants: New Perspectives in Development and Evolution

Abstract

The morphological description of plants has been fundamental in the history of botany and provided the keys for taxonomy. Nevertheless, in biology, a discipline governed by the interest in function and based on reductionist approaches, the analysis of forms has been relegated to second place. Plants contain organs and structures that resemble geometrical forms. Plant ontogeny may be seen as a sequence of growth processes including periods of continuous growth with modification that stop at crucial points often represented by structures of remarkable similarity to geometrical figures. Instead of the tradition in developmental studies giving more importance to animal models, we propose that the modular type of plant development may serve to remark conceptual aspects in that may be useful in studies with animals and contribute to original views of evolution.