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150 years of an integrative plant physiology

Nature Plants volume 1, Article number: 15131 (2015) Cite this article

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In October 1865, Julius Sachs published a monograph entitled Experimental Physiology of Plants, and so initiated a new, quantitative branch of basic and applied botany. In our current post-genomic era the legacy of Sachs is re-emerging as a key discipline of the botanical sciences.

The reason for Sachs' obscurity is, at least in part, due to the phenomenon of ‘plant blindness’; most people hardly recognize the natural vegetation in their surroundings as living organisms and certainly rank them as less significant than the animals present in any environment. Moreover, unlike, for instance, biomedical research, botanical studies are perceived to have no direct bearing on the wellbeing of humans. Nevertheless, the celebration of 1868 in Bonn shows that in the nineteenth century, Darwin, Pasteur and Sachs were ranked as equals.

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Figure 1: Julius Sachs (1832–1897) at around 36 years old.
Figure 2: Extracts from Experimental Physiology of Plants5 (copy from the Botanical Institute, University of Bonn, Germany — ex libris Eduard Strasburger).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and in the Department of Plant Biology, Ulrich Kutschera is at the Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, 34132 Kassel, Germany, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, California 94305, USA.,

    Ulrich Kutschera

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  1. Ulrich Kutschera
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Correspondence to Ulrich Kutschera.

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Kutschera, U. 150 years of an integrative plant physiology. Nature Plants 1, 15131 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.131

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