Agnes Arber: Towards a Dynamic Perspective on Plant Morphology

Agnes Arber, a botanist, was equally comfortable studying the external form of plants in the field and laboratory, processing plant material for anatomical study under the microscope, as well as thinking critically about classical morphology and philosophy. She worked intensively and extensively on the plant group monocotyledons, but within the broader context of flowering plants. She proposed new ways of looking at plant form. Her early work was well-known, but her later work has been largely ignored in recent times, with a recent revival of interest in it, particularly in plant developmental biology.