From: Peter Boyce <phymatarum at googlemail.com>
on 2012.03.01 at 03:11:23
Hi Jason,
=A0
On what basis must the 'primeval' leaf be linear? Some of the most complex leaves of extant plants are those of fern and fern-allies, the lineages of which well-predate "modern" families as the aroids.
=A0
I urge everyone to read: Hay & Mabberly (1991). Transference of function and the origins of the aroids - Botanische Jahrb=FCcher f=FCr Systematik 113(23), 339-428]. I can send the pdf to anyone unable access it on-line.
=A0
Peter
On 28 February 2012 01:11, Jason Hernandez <jason.hernandez74@yahoo.com> wrote:
The difficulty I have with the "tropical storms" idea is that some fenestrated Monstera spp. occur in regions not subject to tropical storms, e.g. the premontane cloud forest of the Pacific coast of Ecuador.=A0 I will let growers address the matter of whether scandent Monstera with fenestrated leaves are any easier to pull away from the substrate than, say, scandent Philodendron with entire leaves.
I am not sure what you mean by "created."=A0 We may suppose that the primeval leaf was linear, like the branches of Equisetum or the needles of a conifer (think also of Lycopodium and Araucaria), and that the next evolutionary step was a broadening, so as to capture more sun.=A0 All the variations in leaves we see are developments in response to the requirements of different niches.=A0 The juvenile-stage leaves of a Monstera probably approximate the ancestral leaves, in parallel with the way various organisms' embryonic development hints at their evolutionary stages.
Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
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