Quelques aspects d'une morphologie continuiste et dynamique

Abstract

The authors discuss presuppositions of classical plant morphology and point out the difficulties of classical (classificatory) typology (based on typical forms that are mutually exclusive, categories such as shoot, root, leaf, or trichome), which have been known for a long time. It is shown how these difficulties can be overcome by a more open morphology concept that is continuous and dynamic. Furthermore, it is pointed out that such an approach works through an appropriate methodology based on principal components analysis and a decomposition of the plant into nested morphological articulations. Keywords: plant morphology, continuum morphology, dynamic morphology.