ABSTRACT

The first successful plant tissue and cell culture was created by Gottlieb Haberlandt near the turn of the 20th century, when he reported the culture of leaf mesophyll tissue and hair cells (see Steward, 1968; Krikorian and Berquam, 1969). This was a remarkable accomplishment, considering

that little was known about plant physiology at the time. In retrospect, however, Haberlandt must have drawn on a body of previous knowledge in plant biology. We must assume that he was familiar with the writings of early philosophers such as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, Avicenna, Magnus, Angelicus, and Goethe, and that his studies surely must have included the anatomical observations of Hooke, Malpighi, Grew, Nageli, and Hanstein. His own research must have led him to the investigations by early plant physiologists such as van Helmont, Mariotte, Hales, Priestley, Ingenhousz, and Senebier, and he must have had access to the morphological and physiological investigations of 19th century botanical researchers such as Schleiden, Schimper, Pringsheim, Unger, Hedwig, Hofmeister, Vochting, Sachs, Goebel, Bower, and Farlow. The information available from these sources, coupled with improved light microscopes, must have given Haberlandt the insight necessary to culture plant cells and to predict that they could not only grow, but divide and develop into embryos and then into whole plants, a process referred to as totipotency by Steward (1968).