Economic aspects of applied anatomy:

 Economic aspects of applied anatomy: 

• Economic Aspects of Applied Anatomy

• There Are Occasions When Herbarium Botanists Find That It Is Difficult To Assign A Particular Species Or Genus To A Family. • General Affinities Are Suspected But There Is Insufficient Evidence For Them To Place A Taxon In A Particular Family. • Additional Anatomical Evidence May Be Of Help And There Are Many Times When Little Extra Helpful Information Comes From The Anatomy.

• When flowers and fruits are absent! • Leaf fragments, wood and roots or twigs may have readily recognizable features which can be seen with a lens, but more often than not, identity has to be confirmed with the microscope. • It is possible, for example, to check the identity of non-flowering plants by looking at the leaf surfaces under the SEM. The appearance of the leaf surface in these plants can also indicate which subgroup they belong to.

• Medicinal plants • Most of the drugs which are still extracted from plants come from leaves, bark, roots or rhizomes. Leaves often become fragmented and detached; bark, roots or rhizomes can be difficult to identify from their macroscopic appearance. • Standards of safety and quality to be maintained, For these purposes, accurate anatomical and morphological descriptions of the drugs have been published.

• Sometimes closely similar substitutes are put on the market when the usual source of material is unavailable, for example, when Bolivian Guarea bark is difficult to obtain, and a substitute from Haiti is available. Microscopic study has shown that the substitute is from a different species, be-cause the groups of phloem fibres are dissimilar but chemical tests prove it to be equally suitable for use. • Occasionally the substitute may be poor and unsuitable. Rheum officinale (False Rhubarb) root and rhizome is used medicinally, but Rheum rhaponticum is the vegetable. Fortunately, chemical and anatomical tests can be applied to detect which species is present.

• Some herbs are used extensively as seasoning. These are often imported in the form of dried powdered plant parts, usually rhizomes, roots or leaves. (difficult to detect with the naked eye) • Sometimes it is not possible to get closer than the family, as for example in Salicaicae. In trunk wood, Salix and Populus can normally be separated because Salix usually has hetero-cellular rays and Populus homo-cellular rays.

• However, in the root wood this distinction does not hold. Indeed, root wood is often slightly dissimilar in its anatomy from trunk wood of the same species. This means that one cannot rely on the descriptions contained in reference works on wood anatomy for accurate identification of roots. • Root anatomy is also quite variable within a species, so the only way to be sure of making the proper identification is to compare the root sections with reference microscope slides taken from a range of authenticated specimens.

• Figure shows two roots of Acer pseudoplatanus (TS) grown under very different conditions and some normal trunk wood for comparison.

• Wood products • Archaeological plant remains other than from wood can sometimes be re-markably well preserved.. Cyperus papyrus is a major constituent of the sandal. • Some Borassus (palm) is also present). However, some of the samples are waterlogged and compressed. It is often possible to ‘revive’ such material. The secret is to section it in the compressed form and revive the sections, by floating them briefly in sodium hypochlorite solution or in chlor-zinc-iodine. Temporary mounts are best made in 50% glycerine.

• FORENSIC APPLICATIONS • Forensic work often involves the identification of small pieces of plant material other than wood, although in addition to safe ballast, wood splinters might come from such things as windows, doors and their frames, weapons and the like, and thus play an important part in police work. A wide range of particles of plants may become attached to clothing or footwear which re-late to the scene of a crime. Plant fragments found on suspects may link them with the location of the crime. • An increasing number of plant species are being sold for consumption as drugs – some as ingredients, others as substitutes. It is a hard task to keep up with the introduction of additional species, particularly because the product is often in a very finely powdered form.

• Paleobotany • Just as anatomical features can aid in the identification of archaeological materials, they can be employed in the identification of fossils and place them among extant plant families and genera. Fossils are usually composed of only some plant parts with the crucial identifying features associated with flowers and fruits being absent. • Further examination and comparison to a reference collection of extents may allow us to assign the fossil to an extant taxonomic group.

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