Digital Commons Network^™

Germination Patterns In Dicotyledons, H. T. Clifford

Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Floristic Botany

Seedlings of about 3500 species of dicotyledons were classified as exhibiting either phanerocotylar or cryptocotylar germination. The percentages of cryptocotylar species in the orders as circumscribed by Dahlgren (J. Linn. Soc., Bot. 80:91-124, 1980) were calculated and grouped into five classes whose distributions were plotted onto a bubble-diagram. The resulting pattern revealed a concentration of cryptocotyly in primitive families thereby supporting the view that within the dicotyledons, cryptocotyly is the primitive germination pattern.