RESUMO
The Cactaceae are a diverse group of plants with a wide variety of morphologies. Many species of Opuntia have segmented stems in which terminal cladodes may be separated from main-stem cladodes with varying amounts of resistance. From a geometric approach, derivations were used to calculate normal (axial and bending) and shear (transverse force and torque) stresses at joints due to the weight of the cladodes. Normal and shear stresses act perpendicular and parallel to (along) the cross sections of joints, respectively. Normal stress caused by bending was >10 times that of the mean value of any other stress. Analyses were performed to determine the relationship between maximum normal stress and the amount of lignified xylem cells. Such cells had thicker cell walls compared with the various other cells of stem joints that had thin cell walls and that thus would provide the most resistance to normal stresses. An analogy was made between cactus joints and a composite beam with reinforcing rods. In such joints, thin-walled parenchyma cells might be analogous to concrete that has little resistance to tensile stress, while the thick-walled, lignified xylem cells would be analogous to reinforcing rods. There were statistically significant relationships between normal stresses (from bending and axial loads) and mean percentage of lignified xylem cells (r=0.73) and between normal stresses and total areas of lignified xylem cells (r=0.65) (more stress, more reinforcing xylem cells). Tensile portions of cactus joints had 23% lignified xylem cells, while compressive portions had only 10% lignified xylem cells in joint areas (more tension, more reinforcing xylem cells). In addition, tensile joint tissues had two to three times more thick-walled, lignified xylem cells in the outer 30% of the radius compared with other joint tissues types (more reinforcing near the surface). To our knowledge, this is the first publication to present mechanical stresses at stem joints of cacti and the first to relate these stresses to characteristics of resisting tissues in the joints of a cactus.
RESUMO
Terminal meristems are responsible for all primary growth of roots. It has been asserted that all cells of root meristems are actively dividing (no cells cycle slowly or arrest in the cycle) and stem cell populations expand exponentially. Because cells do not slide relative to each other in roots, relative cell lengths may be used to determine relative cell cycle durations and/or proportions of cells actively dividing in root tissues. If all cells are cycling, no interphase cells should be longer than critical length (length of longest mitotic cell in the meristem) and cells should exhibit an exponential cell-age distribution. Lengths of all cells were obtained radially across entire median longitudinal root sections at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 mm from the founder cell/root cap boundary for five plant species to estimate percentages of cells longer than critical length. For example, up to 15 and 90% of all interphase cells were longer than critical length in 0.5 and 2.0 mm tissues, respectively, indicating that slow-cycling and/or non-proliferative cells are present in such tissues. In order to determine if the distribution of cell lengths in 0.5 mm segments approximated an exponential cell-age distribution, lengths of interphase cells less than critical length were determined. Such interphase cells were placed into ten groups according to cell length and percentages of cells in each group were compared with percentages of cells in groups calculated from an exponential cell-age distribution. Percentages of cells were significantly different from predicted percentages of between 6 and 9 out of ten groups - cell lengths were not distributed exponentially. Because there are significant numbers of interphase cells longer than critical length and since lengths of interphase cells shorter than critical length do not resemble an exponential cell-age distribution, it must be concluded that not all cells in root segments from 0.5 to 3.0 mm root segments are actively dividing. Heretofore, no databases of cell lengths have been used to test these assertions.
