Abstract
THE ideas which I want to put forward may perhaps be indicated best by telling how and by what slow stages they grew up in my mind. A long time ago the late Prof. Gamble and I spent a very long time trying to find out how the green cells which give colour to the marine worm Convoluta Roscoffenis get into the body of the animal, how they manage to increase and multiply there, and what is the impetus which drives them into the association. The conclusion which we reached as to the significance of the association between Convoluta and its green cells is nitrogen hunger. Tne symbiosis is only one of innumerable examples of the universal fact that the world of plants suffers, and has always suffered, from an insufficiency of nitrogen.
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KEEBLE, F. Foundations of Terrestrial Life: The Soil and the Green Plant. Nature 140, 1107 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401107a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1401107a0
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“Foundations of Terrestrial Life”
Nature (1938)