Fatemeh Daemi, Farideh Attar, Asghar Zamani, Mehrshid Riahi,
Volume 7, Issue 4 (2-2021)
Abstract
In the present study, seed surface ornamentations in 31 species (34 populations) and the capsule surface sculpturing in five species of the genus Scrophularia L. distributed in Iran were examined using Scanning Electronic Microscopy. Based on the published seed surface terminologies, all examined seeds show the reticulate pattern with scalariform inner ornamentations. However, there is enough but untrustworthy variations in epidermal cell shapes and the walls’ characteristics to divide the seed surface sculpturing patterns into four different groups: (1) cells with completely irregular shape; (2) cells without distinct shape so that their boundaries are not clear; (3) reticulate polygonal cells bordered with distinct walls neither undulate nor vesiculate, divided in two subgroups; forming elongated narrow cells and wide cells; (4) reticulate polygonal cells bordered with undulated or sometimes vesiculate walls divided in two subgroups; forming elongated narrow cells and wide cells. In addition, all the species' seeds can be alveolate, ridged or without distinct alveoli or ridges regarding their surfaces. There have also been variations in size, shape and color of the seeds even in a single individual. There are no applicable features of capsule surface sculpturing analyzed here, based on which species could be classified in certain groups.
Asghar Zamani,
Volume 9, Issue 3 (12-2022)
Abstract
The seed micromorphological characters of 15 taxa of Iranian Pyrus comprising 22 individuals were examined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Digital Microscopy (DM) for the first time in this survey. For the assessment of probable ecological effects, several individuals of some widespread species were studied. After collecting several samples of each wild taxa of Pyrus from different localities in a ten-year period, the specimens were identified by means of the examination of type specimens and different Floras. After the examination of the seeds surface, qualitative (e.g., shape and ornamentation of seeds including areolate, foveate, reticulate, colliculate, striate and undulate types) and quantitative characters (e.g., size of seeds, size of surface cells and thickness of cell walls) were assessed. Statistical analyses were performed on the data using SPSS software. According to these observations, seed morphological characters showed to have a considerable variation even among the different individuals of the same species, verifying complexity of the genus as revealed by the different approaches which were previously reported. However, some descriptive characters of seeds such as shape, size, surface ornamentation type, cell size and cell wall thickness are presented for the first time for the genus.
