Volume 14 Number S 



The Plant World 



A Magazine ok General Botany 

 MAY, 1911 



A vSKETCH OF THK HLSTORY ()I< PLANT .MOR I'lK )L()GV 



IX AMKRICA. 



Douglas Hoi'Ghtox C.\.mi*i!i;m,. 



The history of botany in the United vStates previous to the 

 middle seventies of the last century was almost exchisively a 

 histor\- of taxonomy of the vascnlar plants. It is trne that in 

 some of the text-books a certain amoimt of morphological 

 work was inclnded, bnt this was of a \ery general character. 

 The j)revailing ideas of morphology, especially those dealing 

 with the homologies of the floral ])arts, were c|nite uninfluenced 

 bv the discoveries of the Ivuropean morphologists whose work 

 has since made a revolutitm in the fundamental princijiles of 

 mor])liologv. Prior to 1870 we may say that practically no 

 serious morjihological work had been done 1yv American bot- 

 anists. 



That the work of tliis earlier j^eriod should be mainlv tax- 

 ononiic is not to be wondered at since the rich and interesting 

 flora of the I'nited States offered a most tempting field to the 

 systematist, and, moreo\er, none of our botanists had })een 

 trained in the Ivuropean laboratories, whence there had just 

 begun to j)enetrate to the outer world the results of the labors 

 of the brilliant workers in morphology and jihysiology who, in 

 German V especiallv, made the middle decades of the nineteenth 

 centur\- the most notable period in the whole history of the 

 science. 



Probablv the name of Hofmeister will stand first in the 

 distinguished line of morphologists who, contemiiorary with 



