A Study of Foliage Morphological Descriptions Accommodating Continuity in Previous Delimitation of Types in Tropical Plants

Autor: Fawibe Oluwasegun Olamide, Ogunyale Omolara Grace, Ayodele Muyiwa Segun, Oyelakin Abiodun Sunday
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Plant Sciences (Science Publishing Group). 3:111
ISSN: 2331-0723
DOI: 10.11648/j.jps.20150303.11
Popis: The morphological description of some selected tropical plants in Ogun State, Nigeria was investigated. This is with a view to bridge existing more or less compartmentalized foliar descriptions which are discrete and lack the observed continuum of shape types in nature. Plants from which leaves were collected and observed for the different traits were randomly collected from some Local Government Areas of the State. The qualitative macromorphological characters observed include, leaf type, leaf shape, leaf apex, leaf base and leaf margin with varying percentage occurrence. Of the 74 distinct foliage types examined 62(84%) matched the existing foliage descriptions in literature while 12(16%) had undefined shape descriptions. It was observed that simple (79%), ovate and lanceolate (18%), entire (58%), acute (26%), acute (44%) had the highest frequency for the leaf type, leaf shape, leaf margin, leaf apex and leaf bases respectively, while the lowest frequency was recorded to be compound (21%), linear, oblanceolate, acicular, orbicular, sagitate, falcate, peltate, hastate, lobed (1.6%), spinose, denticulate, crenate, parted (1.6%), mucronulate and cirrhose (1.6%), auriculate and hastate (1.6%) in the leaf type, leaf shape, leaf margin, leaf apex and leaf bases respectively. Other shapes hitherto undefined include: lanceospatulate, zygomorphic-trilobe, ensiformis, lobed-pentate, lobed-starlate and ellipto-dentoid. The study revealed that there is a continuum in plant foliage macromorphological description rather than independent occurrence of plant foliage characters found in literature.
Databáze: OpenAIRE