Jean Marchant (1650 – 11 November 1738) was a French botanist. Along with his father Nicolas Marchant, he was responsible for preparing the Histoire des plantes from 1667 begun under the aegis of the French Royal Academy of Sciences with the support of Claude Perrault. He named the liverwort genus Marchantia after his father.
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
In this Dossier
Jean Marchant in the context of Liverworts
Liverworts are a group of non-vascular land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta (/mɑːrˌkæntiˈɒfətə, -oʊˈfaɪtə/ ). They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information. The division name was derived from the genus name Marchantia, named after his father by French botanist Jean Marchant.
It is estimated that there are about 9000 species of liverwort. Some of the more familiar species grow as a flattened leafless thallus, but most species are leafy with a form very much like a flattened moss. Leafy species can be distinguished from the apparently similar mosses on the basis of a number of features, including their single-celled rhizoids. Leafy liverworts also differ from most (but not all) mosses in that their leaves never have a costa (present in many mosses) and may bear marginal cilia (very rare in mosses). Other differences are not universal for all mosses and liverworts, but the occurrence of leaves arranged in three ranks, the presence of deep lobes or segmented leaves, or a lack of clearly differentiated stem and leaves all point to the plant being a liverwort. Liverworts are distinguished from mosses in having unique complex oil bodies of high refractive index.
Jean Marchant in the context of Marchantia
Marchantia is a genus of liverworts in the family Marchantiaceae and the order Marchantiales. The genus was named by French botanist Jean Marchant after his father. The widespread species Marchantia polymorpha has had its genome sequenced and is an incipient model organism.
The thallus of Marchantia shows differentiation into two layers: an upper photosynthetic layer with a well-defined upper epidermis with pores and a lower storage layer. The thallus features tiny cup-like structures called gemma cups, containing gemmae, small packets of tissue that are used for asexual reproduction. The combination of barrel-shaped pores and the circular shape of the gemma cups are diagnostic of the genus.