2026 Volume 38 Issue 1 Pages 53-59
Plant morphology, such as vegetative shoots, compound leaves, and inflorescence structures, exhibits self-similar structures. In shoot branching, for instance, leaves formed by the primary apical meristem bear axillary buds that themselves become new apical meristems and produce leaves in the secondary shoots, resulting in a self-similar structure. Although the secondary structures are not always identical to the primary structure in, for example, gene expression, they can share common developmental framework regardless of the chemical or genetic players. In this paper, I discuss the common developmental framework that can be applied on multiple scales in plant morphology, focusing on floral organ numbers in Ranunculaceae flowers and floret numbers in Asteraceae capitula. Although the flowers and inflorescences are differ in scales, number variations in these two structures can be explained by a common developmental framework: whorled-like arrangements of primordia and fluctuations on expression boundaries of fate determinants.
