Note 577 — Chapter XIV · ON LEAF-ARRANGEMENT, OR PHYLLOTAXIS

Mr Church’s whole theory, if it be not based upon, is interwoven with, Sachs’s theory of the orthogonal intersection of cell-walls, and the elaborate theories of the symmetry of a growing point or apical cell which are connected therewith. According to Mr Church, “the law of the orthogonal intersection of cell-walls at a growing apex may be taken as generally accepted” (p. 32); but I have taken a very different view of Sachs’s law, in the eighth chapter of the present book. With regard to his own and Sachs’s hypotheses, Mr Church makes the following curious remark (p. 42): “Nor are the hypotheses here put forward more imaginative than that of the paraboloid apex of Sachs which remains incapable of proof, or his construction for the apical cell of Pteris which does not satisfy the evidence of his own drawings.”