The Study On The Development Of Lycoris Leaves

Lycoris is valuable as an ornamental, and they are also used in medicine and industry. Up to now, many scholars have studied on Lycoris, and their researches have covered many aspects, but, any report has been not found in its development of structure. In this paper, the leaves included zonary leaves and squamas of Lycoris chinesis and L. radiata of Amaryllidaceae were studied on the procedure of development, structures and inclusions, the main contents were as follows: (1) The differentiation of leaves was studied. The leaves of Lycoris were composed of overground zonary leaves and underground sheaths which would be changed into squamas finally. The stem apex of L.chinesis was slit by the use of paraffin method and delt with scanning electronmicroscopy, and the results were indicated that: the differentiation of leaves come through four stages, which were the period of leaf buttress forming, the development of leaf primordium and the stages of straplike leaf and sheath shaping. In this process, the plaits appeared at the bilateral base of the leaf with the zonary leaf stretching, in the end, the plaits closed, and the sheath was formed (2) The growth mode of L.radiata leaves was studied. In this chapter, the methods of drawing equal distance lines and leaf epidermal preparations were used. The results were that, the leaf elongate after coming out to the day mainly depended on the stretch of its base, and its width and thickness changed little. With the leaf growing, its epidermal cells lengthened by and by. But, to a great extent, the leaf area broadening tied to the epidermal cells dividing. (3) The development of secretory structures in leaf of Lycoris chinensis was studied. By means of paraffin method to slice the leaves(zonary leaves and squamas) in different maturity degrees into transverse sections, the structures, development and shaping modes of secretory canals in leaves of L.chinesis were studied. It turned out to be that, there were different in secretory canals shaping modes between zonary leaves and squamas, the mode in the former was lysigenous, and the latter was schizo-lysigenous pattern. (4) The inclusions and its shape in squamas of L.chinesis were studied by means of paraffin method, hand sectioning and scanning electronmicroscopy. It was found that, the inclusions were starches, some mucilage and crystals. Crystals existed as orbicular crystal druses which were massed by many prismy crystals. Most of starches were in the filmy-wall cells near to outer epidermis, and they were round approximately.