Are there any monocot plant leaves having spongy and palisade mesophyll layers, or any other characteristics similar to that of a dicot leaf? Thanks in advance.
To my knowledge there is no any monocotyledonous plant in which the mesophyll layer is differentiated into palisade and spongy parenchyma. However, Smilax zeylanica is the only monocotyledonous plant which shows reticulate venation instead of parallel venation. Reticulate venation is feature of dicotyledonous plants.
Interesting question! Reticulate venation is not uncommon in monocots. Several members of Araceae, for example, Xanthosoma sagittifolium, Cyrtosperma johnstonii; Dioscoreales, eg. Chinese yam; Smilacaeae, eg. Smilax melastomifolia, etc. have reticulate venation. I haven't seen a cross section of the reticulate monocot leaves to know if they have distinct palisade and spongy mesophyll cells. But, the difference between palisade and spongy is less distinct in some dicots with the same number of stomata on both the adaxial and abaxial side. However, there are flowering plants that do not exactly fit into either monocots or eudicots. Amborella trichopoda and water lilies are now considered to be basal angiosperms and are classified separately at the base of the angiosperms although A. trichopda was included with dicots and water lilies with monocots in previous classification systems. A. trichopoda and water lilies have reticulate venation but their vascular system lacks vessels. It looks like to me that the dicot leaf is more ancestral than the monocot leaf, which suggests that reticulate venation in monocots may indicate a basal lineage in monocot evolution. I would be interested to hear if somebody has experience with any of the basal angiosperms.
Thank you for the feedback Prof. Tadege. May I please request some tips on where to start looking for an explanation on the evolutionary lineage and diversification of the monocot and dicot leaf?
I think first is to look at the phylogeny of Angiosperms itself. The latest and most accepted of which is APG III by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. You can find it here. file:///E:/leaf%20reprint/GROUP-2009-Botanical_Journal_of_the_Linnean_Society.pdf
Then, take any group from the basal angiosperms or monocots or eudictos and search for detailed specific information. You could google for information or specific manuscripts, you can search in NCBI-PubMed, Web of science, Biological Abstracts, Agricola, etc. But I guess, you may not be able to pick every information in one search. You may have to use a combination of several search phrases to get what you want. Or you may just look at the references of some review papers in leaf venation, leaf evolution, etc.
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