Biographical Memoirs Volume 64 (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Ralph H. Wetmore
Ralph H. Wetmore
Pages 420-437
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From page 421... ...
Ralph H Wetmore was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, on April 27, IS92, of loyalist forebears who had moved from New England to Canada at the time of the American Revolution.
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From page 422... ...
His doctoral thesis was on the anatomy of (licotyledonous woody stems and the aerenchymatous system related to lenticels, published in 1926. During his graduate study he spent a summer in Labrador as botanist with a Canadian government expedition characterizing the flora around Lake Melville.
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From page 423... ...
in 1925 he returned to Acadia University to an appointment as assistant professor in biology, with the expectation that he might settle there anct succeed Professor Perry who was nearing retirement. In 1926 he received the offer of an assistant professor position in botany at Harvard by then-chairman, Professor Oakes Ames.
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From page 424... ...
The collection at Harvard grew to over 25,000 specimens of wood covering 300 families of gymnosperms and angiosperms and over 35,000 microscope slicles of wood sections, in addition to permanent mounts of pollen samples and flower parts, which together form the Bailey-Wetmore Wood Collection housed today in the Harvard University Herbaria building at 22 Divinity Avenue. Research based on these collections led to new insights into both in the relationship between plant anatomy and taxonomy and in ideas as to evolutionary origins of the angiosperms.
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From page 425... ...
He therefore began a series of studies in collaboration with his graduate students of the developmental processes in early embryogenesis of several plants including the woolly gymnosperm Pinus strobes, the herbaceous flowering plant Phlox drummondii, and several species of the ferns and lower vascular plants, including the bracken fern, Pteradium aquilinum, and the fern Phiebodium aureum as well as studies in the lycopsids, l~ycopodium and SelagZnella. This research was extended to the anatomical analysis of continuing embryogenesis in the vegetative shoot apices and flowering apices of a number of the vascular plants, studies that parallelec!
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From page 426... ...
Stuclents in Wetmore's laboratory combined techniques of meristem culture and callus tissue culture deducing evidence for the chemical influences, especially hormonal, of the shoot on undifferentiated tissues. Further studies involved the development of isolated leaf primorclia and the discovery of their early pluripotent capacity to form either buds or leaves and their later determination as leaves.
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From page 427... ...
After giving up their home on Francis Avenue, just a block from the Biological Laboratories, Ralph and Olive mover! to an apartment on Garden Street where they continued to host friends and students and colleagues.
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From page 428... ...
He was one of the first among the developmental botanists to see the importance of organ anct tissue culture methods and to apply them as tools useful in dissecting the intricacies of developmental processes-embryogenesis, cytodifferentiation, and meristem expression. Tissue and organ culture were introclucect as laboratory experiments in his unclergraduate courses and served as experimental approaches for many of his students
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From page 429... ...
His experiments with Rier on vascular tissue differentiation continue to provide the paradigm for studies on plant cytodifferentiation. Ralph's laboratory served as focal point in the United States for the development of experimental approaches to problems in plant morphology and anatomy.
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From page 430... ...
Part 2. Lenticels in relation to diffuse storage rays of woody stems.
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From page 431... ...
Studies in the developmental anatomy of Phlox drummondii Hook.
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From page 432... ...
Morel. A technique for preventing inactivation at the cut surface in auxin diffusion studies.
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From page 433... ...
A comparison of auxin destruction by tissue extracts and intact tissues of the fern, Osmunda cinnamomea L Plant Physiol.
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From page 434... ...
Apical meristems of vegetative shoots and strobili in certain gymnosperms.
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From page 435... ...
Phytomorphology 14:203-17. 1965 Plant vascular tissue differentiation.
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From page 436... ...
The Harvard University wood collection in the rejuvenation of systematic wood anatomy. Taxon.
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