TERATOLOGY AND METAMERIC PLANT CONSTRUCTION

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Abstract
Summary: The growth of Plantago lanceolata L. has been described using metamers as construction units. The growth of each unit has been broken down into a sequence of four simple building instructions, two of which incorporate two or three alternatives. The resulting conceptual model has been tested against a variety of teratologies known to exist in Plantago lanceolata. All of these malformations could be explained in terms of either wrong steps, or wrong sequences, or both. There seems to be a certain hierarchy of control such that more malformations tend to occur at tertiary meristems than at primary meristems. For at least some of the teratologies, the nature of the control seems genetic.