Notes on the Pollen Morphology and Phylogeny Restionales and Poales

Evolutionary History of the Grasses

“…Grass pollen itself can be distinguished by minute channels or holes that penetrate the outer, but not the inner, pollen wall (Linder and Ferguson, 1985). The earliest firm records of grass pollen are from the Paleocene of South America and Africa, between 60 and 55 million years ago .…”

Microsporogenesis and anther development in Bromeliaceae

“…Monosulcate pollen is the plesiomorphic condition for monocotyledons (Furness & Rudall 1999a), although many other families of Poales have ulcerate pollen (Linder & Ferguson 1985), including Typhaceae (Typha and Sparganium). Among other putative relatives of Bromeliaceae, Rapateaceae possess monosulcate, disulculate or zonaaperturate pollen (Carlquist 1961) and Mayacaceae are monosulcate (Erdtman 1952).…”

New genera and species of Australian Restionaceae (Poales)

“…Loxocarya group (Briggs & Johnson in press) Almost all the described species of this group were included in an extremely wide and unnatural concept of Restio. Morphological features (when carefully investigated), anatomical, palynological and phytochemical data are all consistent in supporting the restriction of Restio to species of the African region, and showing that Restio, thus restricted, is more closely allied to other African genera than to the extra-African taxa formerly referred to Restio (Cutler 1969, Johnson & Briggs 1981, Linder & Ferguson 1985.…”

“…Anatomical studies have been extended to the rhizome and roots by Pate & Delfs (in press) and Meney, Pate & Hickman (in press). Palynology (Chanda 1966, Linder 1984, Linder & Ferguson 1985 and flavonoids (Harborne 1979, Williams et al 1997 also show diversity largely concordant with the major distinctions between Australian and African groups and assist in characterising some genera. The early classifications also reflect the inadequacies of the available collections since many species and several genera are rare and of restricted distribution, so that they were not represented in early collections.…”