A skeptic’s guide to Sherwin Carlquist’s inferences of xylem function

What is it about?

Sherwin Carlquist was a brilliant wood anatomist and generated more hypotheses about xylem structure-function relations than any other anatomist. Yet his work includes certain idiosyncrasies that sometimes make it hard to detect the crucial insights his work embodies. Here, I try to guide readers around some of these quirks of his work to help readers find the inferential gems that provide fodder for decades of empirical testing.

Featured Image