Abstract
Fecundation and Development of Plants AT a meeting of the Ashmolean Society, at Oxford, on November 19, 1839, Prof. Daubeny explained the new views with respect to the fecundation and the development of plants, which had beon brought forward by Brown, Mirbel, Schlieden and other botanists of the day. When Linnæus, he said, had established the doctrine of the sexuality of plants he left to his successors two branches of inquiry in a manner untouched, namely, first, in what precise method do the stamens operate upon the pistils when they cause fecundation to take place; and secondly, to what extent can we trace an analogy between the mode of fecundation and development in the case of flowering plants where sexes exist, and in that of cryptogamous ones, where they are not discoverable. The first of these points had been elucidated by the researches of Brown, A. Brongniart and Ehrenborg, while the analogy subsisting between flowering and cryptogamous plants had been investigated by Mirbel in France and Schlieden in Germany. The former observed now cells originating out of those already existing in the case of Marchantia; while the latter appears to have shown that a process the same in kind takes place within the pollen tubes emitted from flowering plants at the very time they reach the ovary and impregnate it, as well as the cells of the plant in the subsequent stages of its growth. From Schliedon's researches it would seem to follow that the embryo exists in the pollen, and not in the ovary; the office of the latter organ being merely that of furnishing to the young individual a recoptacle and nourishment. This, however, was disputed by Mirbel.
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Science News a Century Ago. Nature 144, 875–876 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144875b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144875b0