S.N.Sharma* & Vinita Smriti
Department of Botany, Patna University, Patna-800005, India.
Received 19th Jan. 2007; Revised 26th, Feb. 2007
Abstract: Six Chenopodiaceous taxa have been screened with respect to foliar epidermal characters and stomatal type, shape, size and frequency. Anomocytic type of stomata is by far the commonest with the exception of anisocytic ones in a few taxa. Stomatal contiguity appears to be a natural phenomenon here as against the earlier reports, where it has been ascribed to the external physical parameters. Occurrence of distinct stomatiferous and non-stomatiferous areas, single guard cell / stoma and differential nature of epidermal cells are other important findings .These characters have proved useful for the taxonomic alignments at the generic level. At the specific level, however, inter-relationships cannot be reliably made on the basis of data from this field of study. Amphistomatic leaves and typical anomocytic stomata have been found to be common to all, which inter alia indicates that these taxa form a natural assemblage.
