Novel Fiber in the Leaves of Dioon!

A new paper has been published in the International Journal of Plant Sciences by Tracy Magellan, Patrick Griffith, Barry Tomlinson, Brett Huggett, and Alison Ricciardi on types of fibers in the cycad Dioon. This paper is a continuation in a series of cycad anatomy papers being worked on at Montgomery.

In this paper, we examine living material from all 15 species of Dioon to confirm preliminary observations and provide details of wall structure in comparison with fibers in the leaf axis. All species of Dioon have the same configuration of cell types in the leaflets, the most conspicuous element being elongated fibers with multilamellate cellulosic cell walls. This fiber type is seemingly unique among all cycad genera. For the first time, our team has published SEM images of multilamellate cellulosic fibers (MCFs).

Michael Caloje, MBC Cycad Biologist, took the amazing cover image!

Montgomery Botanical Center’s living collection makes collaborative research studies using large numbers of species possible.