Physiological Processes in Plant Ecology: the Structure for a Synthesis

Abstract

The study of physiology — “science of the normal functions and phenomena” — of living plants should be inseparable from the study of their ecology which is concerned with “the habits, modes of life, and relations to their surroundings” (Fowler and Fowler, 1949) of individual plants in communities and ecosystems. Physiological plant ecology serves to bridge physiology and ecology which represent a continuum of biological research method and philosophy, and this bridging discipline has proved a possible and profitable exercise, generating new insights into both physiology and ecology. However, the canvas of physiological ecology is so vast and the scale of the exercise is so immense that there is a real danger of themes being lost and contributors becoming increasingly unable to relate their individual efforts to those of others. Each of us, like Niggle, has a clear concept of how particular leaves should be represented. Yet in striving to paint these within a particular context we too are frequently reduced to tacking our canvasses to the dimly perceived tree. It is this dilemma, the dilemma of context, relevance, and relationship between the different contributions, which poses the greatest challenge to physiological plant ecology.

“Niggle was a painter. He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.” (Tolkien, 1964)