A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONCEPT OF WOUND REPAIR IN WOODY STEMS

Abstract

Those xylem ray cells closely associated with the cambial zone will unite in proliferating with other cells recently derived from the cambium following the wounding of a basswood stem. However, ray cells remote from the cambium, although potentially meristematic, will fail to divide. Nonetheless these latter will grow out occasionally when the ray, exposed during the culturing operation, is closely connected with actively growing callus tissue. Parenchyma throughout the body of the secondary wood of the basswood has been shown to proliferate whenever a mass is exposed which is considerably larger in volume than a normal multiseriate ray. The healing of wounds in the linden best should be considered as a function of active, newly formed, cambial derivatives and not as a reaction dominated by any one tissue.