THE POSSIBLE SIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS OF FLAGELLAR BASES IN PLANTS

Abstract

S ince the publication of the elegant work of Gibbons and Grimstone (1960) on flagellar structure in certain colourless flagellates, the microanatomy of flagellar bases in general might have been thought of as known but for the fact that green algae, and their derivatives the land plants, show certain additional features that these authors did not encounter. These features can be detected, though with difficulty, after methacrylate embedding with or without staining (cf. my own earlier work on a fern spermatozoid and the zoospores of green algae in papers such as Manton, 1959; Hoffman & Manton, 1962), but with the greater clarity made possible by epon embedding and lead staining (e.g. Manton, 1964) they become so spectacular as to arrest the attention. An interpretation is nevertheless not at once self‐evident and, apart from using these details as a convenient means of distinguishing with certainty between the two ends of a detached flagellar base in the special case of the germinating zoospore of Stigeoclonium (Manton, 1964), my own recent comments were limited to noting an apparent phyletic restriction to green algae and their relatives or descendants, as opposed to other types of pigmented flagellated cells known to me.