Update (October 8, 2021): A September 19 paper in New Phytologist challenges the idea that cantils are a distinct organ, instead suggesting that the structures are a quirk of aneuploidy.
To any devoted reader of The Scientist, it should come as no surprise that even the most intensely studied organisms have organs, tissues, and cell types unknown to science. Just last week, neuroscientists described a pair of novel brain cell types in mice. And in recent years, scientists identified for the first time a lymphatic system in the brain that’s present in both mice and humans.
Yesterday (June 15), plant biologists reported in Development that the much-studied model plant Arabidopsis thaliana possesses an organ that had been overlooked by researchers and naturalists for centuries. The cantil—named for its cantilever-like form—reaches out horizontally from the stem and supports the pedicel, a stalk that grows vertically and is topped off by a ...
