BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
VoL. 14, No. 1 
CamsripGr, Massacnusetts, JuNE 27, 1949 
DEGRADATION OF PLANT REMAINS 
IN ORGANIC SEDIMENTS 
BY 
Eso S. BARGHOORN 
One of the least understood but at the same time fun- 
damental processes which operates in nature is the al- 
teration of plant residues into economically important 
substances such as peat, lignite and coal. In its broadest 
terms this degradation of plant substance must be re- 
garded as a phase of the major organic cycle of carbon. 
It is obvious, however, that in ‘‘geologically permanent”’ 
large-scale accumulations of organic complexes such as 
the fossil fuels, we are concerned essentially with major 
deviations from, rather than participation in, the carbon 
cycle. 
In a certain sense, therefore, the study of the aceumu- 
lation of plant residues and their subsequent alteration 
comprise an area of botanical investigation which lies 
between microbiology on the one hand and the geologi- 
cal and chemical aspects of sedimentation on the other. 
Microbiological studies of degradation, however, are 
more often centered on specific organisms or on the meta- 
bolic products of their activity, rather than on an analy- 
sis of the effects produced on various naturally occurring 
substrata. In addition, emphasis in microbiological stud- 
les is quite logically placed more on the degradative as- 
pects than on the accumulative aspects of the organic 
cycle. 
[1] 
