So this morning I went through..not all..but most of my old text books and I found absolutely nothing significant, no papers, no articles, no chapters about Welwitschias...In fact, no good text book about paleobotany at all!
A lot of books about geochemistry , carbonates, biogeochemistry, chemistry, the Canadian Cordilleras, metamorphism, diagenesis etc... If I had to imagine the person who own the book collection I own I would never imagine myself. I had an interest in paleontology and particularly paleobotany one day long long ago (long ago enough that it was probably pre-angiosperms!)but now really it is just a left over curiosity.
Here is a little bit that I remember:
-They are believed to be some sort of link,in between gymnosperms and angiosperms.... OK, let's be clear here I mean "something between angiosperms and gymnosperms" I don't mean "the link, the step in between, the undeniable ancestor of all angiosperms...
- They are classified as some sort of weird gymnosperm...Well I have seen the female and male cones myself now.
Male cones (not a great photos. They are the small things in the centre of the plant)
Female cones. The "skinny ones have just lost all their "scales" and their seeds. I often saw those orange bugs on the female cones...no other bugs though.
You'll notice that in the original post about the Welwitschias I did post one male and one female picture.
Seeds (the cream coloured papery disks) caught in a small depression in the desert...maybe the start of something.
-Their wood is closer in structure (something to do with vessels to carry water) to that of angiosperms than that of gymnosperms...but as I recall some angiosperms...those considered "primitive" (and not as in unsophisticated or unsuccessful, just as in evolved from an earlier branch...Hmmm? "branch" bad word in this context)..so I was writing...some "primitive" angiosperms do not have vessels..right there suggesting to me that even though the Welwitschias have characteristic of both groups they are not the link between them....
Anyway, my paleobotany days are behind me but it was nice to see the Welwitschias.
