Systematics and Evolution

Abstract

John Ray in his Historia Plantarum (1686--1704) was the first botanist to recognize cotyledon number as a useful means of subdividing flowering plants (Bancroft 1914). Although Linnaeus in his Philosophia Botanica (1751) did not explicitly mention this distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons, it was taken up by all later botanists. In most angiosperm classifications from Jussieu (1789) to Engler and Prantl (1887--89), monocotyledons were arranged in a position intermediate between nonangiosperms and dicotyledons, indicating a lower level of organization for monocotyledons than dicotyledons. However, with the spread of phylogenetic thinking, a ranalean origin for the monocotyledons was suggested (e.g., Bessey 1893), and Wettstein's (1901--1907) textbook was the first to acknowledge a derived position for monocotyledons by treating them after the dicotyledons.