Morphological And Anatomical Studies On Little Leaf In Some Flowering Plants

Morphological and anatomical peculiarities of little leaf symptoms in eight species of flowering plants belonging to six families were studied. Of these, two were described under spike diseases by earlier authors. In all the species studied, the origin of the little leaf was in shoots produced as a result of pathogenesis. This usually involved the activation of dormant axillary buds on old woody parts of the stems. The thickness of the little leaves was highly reduced with a corresponding reduction in the length of the palisade cells and decrease in number of spongy layers. There was a general lowering in the number of stomata per unit area in the little leaves even though there was no difference in the size of the stomata. The distribution of special cells containing secondary metabolic products was much restricted in the little leaf.