Fiber Cables in Leaf Blades of Typha Domingensis and Their Absence in Typha Elephantina: a Diagnostic Character for Phylogenetic Affinity
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Israel Journal of Plant Sciences ISSN: 0792-9978 (Print) 2223-8980 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tips20 Fiber cables in leaf blades of Typha domingensis and their absence in Typha elephantina: a diagnostic character for phylogenetic affinity Allan Witztum & Randy Wayne To cite this article: Allan Witztum & Randy Wayne (2016) Fiber cables in leaf blades of Typha domingensis and their absence in Typha elephantina: a diagnostic character for phylogenetic affinity, Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, 63:2, 116-123, DOI: 10.1080/07929978.2015.1096626 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07929978.2015.1096626 Published online: 12 Jan 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 16 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tips20 Download by: [Weill Cornell Medical College] Date: 01 June 2016, At: 10:53 Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, 2016 Vol. 63, No. 2, 116À123, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07929978.2015.1096626 Fiber cables in leaf blades of Typha domingensis and their absence in Typha elephantina:a diagnostic character for phylogenetic affinity Allan Witztuma and Randy Wayneb* aDepartment of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel; bLaboratory of Natural Philosophy, Section of Plant Biology, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA (Received 10 August 2015; accepted 15 September 2015) Vertical fiber cables anchored in horizontal diaphragms traverse the air-filled lacunae of the tall, upright, spiraling leaf blades of Typha domingensis, T. angustifolia, T. latifolia and T. £ glauca. The fiber cables may make a mechanical contribution to leaf blade stiffness while allowing flexibility under windy conditions. We examined the very tall, upright, spiraling leaf blades of T. elephantina, which can be over 4 m long, for fiber cables. In the tall species of Typha, there are two alternative architectures for upright leaf blades. T. domingensis utilizes fiber cables to enhance stiffness in the tall, upright concavo-convex leaf blades, whereas T. elephantina may maintain their tall stature in the absence of fiber cables by having a different cross-sectional geometry. These alternative architectures can be used as a diagnostic character along with other morphological characters to assess phylogenetic affinity in Typha. The very tall T. elephantina which lacks fiber cables may be more closely related to the much shorter T. minima, which also has no cables, than to the tall T. domingensis and T. angustifolia, both of which have prominent fiber cables. T. elephantina and T. minima share other morphological characters as well. Keywords: cattail; fiber cables; phylogenetic relationship; Typha domingensis; Typha elephantina Introduction length of the leaf blade, but are absent in the distal part. The long, linear, upright, air-filled leaves of Typha (cattails, We have suggested that the fiber cables contribute to the reed mace) achieve impressive heights relative to their leaf blade stiffness while allowing flexibility under windy width, thickness and cross-sectional area. This is especially conditions (Witztum & Wayne 2014). Similarly, fiber noteworthy because they are often subject to high winds. cables are also present in Typha latifolia L., Typha angus- £ In Typha domingensis Pers., leaves may be longer than tifolia L., and Typha glauca Godr., although they are 4 m, each leaf composed of a basal sheathing portion and a absent in the last-formed leaves of flowering plants of free-standing blade that may be 3 m long and only 1 cm T. latifolia (Witztum & Wayne 2014, 2015). In this paper, wide. This impressive height-to-width ratio requires rigid- we compare the architecture of the leaf blades of T. domi- ity which is provided by outer stiff tissue and an internal ngensis to those of T. elephantina Roxb. and characterize hierarchical series of frameworks which prevent the inward the fiber cables of T. domingensis. collapse of the stiff outer abaxial and adaxial tissues. The Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 10:53 01 June 2016 light-weight construction of the leaf blade is a grid work of tissue enclosing air-filled lacunae or compartments that Materials and methods facilitate gas exchange for photosynthesis and respiration Leaves of Typha elephantina were collected on November (Constable & Longstreth 1994). Each compartment is 10, 2014 from plants growing on marshy soil covered by delimited by the abaxial and adaxial leaf surface tissue, sand on the Mediterranean coast near Michmoret, Israel. longitudinal leaf partitions running the length of the leaf Leaves of T. domingensis were collected on November which keep the leaf surfaces apart, and horizontal dia- 20, 2014 from plants growing in a wet wadi in Beer phragms connected at right angles to the partitions (Teale Sheva, Israel. Cross-sections of the leaf blades of both 1949;Marsh1955;Kaul1974; Rowlatt & Morshead 1992; species were cut 20 cm above the highest connection of McManus et al. 2002; Witztum & Wayne 2014). the leaf sheath and then at »40 cm intervals toward the In Typha domingensis, fiber cables composed of long tip of the leaf blade. Cross-sections and longitudinal sec- fiber cells are anchored in the diaphragms of the leaf tions were photographed with a dissecting microscope blades and traverse the air-filled lacunae for most of the (Leica M 125 equipped with a Leica DFC 295 camera; *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]. Ó 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 117 Leica Microsystems, Buffalo Grove, IL, USA). Some sec- Table 1. Leaf twist in spiral leaves of T. elephantina and tions were treated with phloroglucinolÀHCl (McLean & T. domingensis. Ivimey Cook 1941). Isolated cables were pulled free from Leaf blade Number of Twist in diaphragms and photographed with a compound micro- Leaf number length (m) turns degrees scope (Leica DM 2500 equipped with a Leica DFC 295 T. elephantina camera) using polarizing optics and a full-wave plate compensator (Wayne 2014). 1 (oldest) 4.0 1.50 540 2 3.52 1.25 450 Fiber cables were macerated in Jeffrey’s macerating fluid (McLean & Ivimey Cook 1941) and fiber cell lengths 3 3.77 1.25 450 4 3.73 1.25 450 and widest diameters were measured with a compound microscope (Olympus BH-2; SPLAN10 for lengths and 5 3.59 1.25 450 6 3.23 1.25 450 SPLAN40 for diameters Olympus, Waltham, MA, USA); AmScope MU300 camera and ToupView (3.7) image 7 (youngest) 2.10 0.63 225 capturing software; AmScope, Irvine, CA, USA) using T. domingensis 1 (oldest) 2.38 1.5 540 NIH Image J, which is available free from the National Institutes of Health (http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/). 2 2.23 1.0 360 3 2.03 1.0 360 Small pieces of leaf blades of T. domingensis were cut to expose leaf partitions, diaphragms and fiber cables. 4 1.89 0.5 180 5 2.27 1.0 360 These were prepared for observation with a scanning elec- tron microscope by fixing in 1.5% paraformaldehyde and 6 (youngest) 2.10 1.0 360 4% glutaraldehyde (Karnovsky 1965) in 0.05M sodium phosphate buffer, pH 6.8, for 24 h at room temperature and then rinsing in buffer. The leaf pieces were dehy- and ribbon-like toward the tip of the leaf (Figure 1). In drated with an ethanol series and then critical-point dried. T. elephantina the cross-section at the base of the leaf Pieces were coated with gold (100À200 A) and photo- blade 20 cm above the highest attachment of the sheath is graphed with a Jeol SEM (JSM-35CF, acceleration volt- V-shaped (Figures 4 and 5), then becomes trigonal and age 25 KV; Jeol, Tokyo, Japan). Breaking loads for 6-cm segments of fiber cables pulled free from leaves of T. domingensis were deter- mined on an Instron 5564 (Instron, Norwood, MA, USA; Witztum & Wayne 2014) using a 10 N load cell with a cross-head speed of 5 mm/min. The diameter of fiber cables was measured with a compound microscope and Young’s modulus was determined from the Instron data. Observations Tall plants of both Typha elephantina and T. domingensis may exceed 4 or 5 m in height. In both species leaf blades Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 10:53 01 June 2016 are spirally twisted (left-handed spirals) and a 4-m long blade of T. elephantina spiraled through 1.5 turns or 540. Similarly a 2.38-m leaf blade of T. domingensis spiraled through 540. Other leaves spiraled through 180, 225, 360, and 450 (Table 1). Leaves are composed of a basal leaf sheath and a free- standing leaf blade which itself can be 4 m long or more in some leaves. Cross-sections of leaf blades from the thick basal (proximal) part of the blade to the thin ribbon- distal portion differ in their shape (Figure 1). Cross-sec- tions of leaf blades of T. domingensis cut 20À30 cm above the highest attachment of the tapering leaf sheath Figure 1. Cross-sections of Typha elephantina (left) and Typha are convex on the lower (abaxial or dorsal) side and con- domingensis (right). Upper sections are from the base of the leaf blade (20 cm above the highest attachment of the leaf sheath to cave on their upper (adaxial or ventral) surface (Figures 2 the leaf blade). Other sections were progressively cut through and 3). This concavo-convex geometry persists along the the length of the leaf blade (approximately every 30À40 cm). length of the leaf blade until the leaf blade becomes thin The smallest unit of scale is in millimeters.