Talk:Plant anatomy

Scope of plant anatomy

In an edit of 3 November 2012, IP editor 189.18.201.66 said: There is a different view of morphology and anatomy, in which morphology is not opposed to anatomy, morphology encompasses it, see the article Morphology. The import of the lead, as I understand it is that while plant anatomy once-upon-a-time included both the external and the internal structure of plants, it is now used exclusively to refer to the internal structure of plants. Plant morphology also once-upon-a-time used to refer to both the external and the internal structure. Many authors choose to make a distinction between the two. See, for example, Raven, P. H., R. F. Evert, & S. E. Eichhorn. Biology of Plants, 7th ed., page 9. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2005), ISBN 0-7167-1007-2. On the other side of the coin, cellular biologists prefer instead the term plant structure. See, for example, titles like "Boron in plant structure and function", "Elevated CO2 and plant structure: a review" and "The use of an optical brightener in the study of plant structure". When they use "plant anatomy" or "plant morphology" they generally are talking about more macro structures. The Plant morphology article has no citations for the use of the term "plant morphology" by cellular biologists as an over-arching term, I suspect that such usage is quite rare. The first several articles about plant cell structure that I read that used the term "plant morphology" did not use it as an over-arching term, but in conformity with the the above distinction. See the insightful article Hagemann, Wolfgang (1992). "The Relationship of Anatomy to Morphology in Plants: A New Theoretical Perspective". International Journal of Plant Sciences. 153 (3(2)): S38–S48. --Bejnar (talk) 18:16, 3 November 2012 (UTC)