Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 7 July 1967:
Vol. 157. no. 3784, pp. 80 - 82
DOI: 10.1126/science.157.3784.80
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Chenopod and Amaranth Pollen: Electron-Microscopic Identification

Matsuo Tsukada 1

1 Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Electron-microscopic criteria for distinguishing chenopod and amaranth pollen have been found in the number of minute holes and spinules, and especially in the ratio between them, which is lang 1.5 in amaranths and rang 1.6 in chenopods. Sixty-eight percent of total fossil pollen from a Classic Maya level (carbon-14 age 1380 ± 120 B.P.) in a lake-sediment core from El Salvador belongs to wild amaranths, which presumably invaded corn fields. Fossil chenopodiaceous pollen from a depth of 3.85 meters (about 4000 years old) at Tinte, the Netherlands, is mostly Atriplex littoralis, which was evidently very common on coastal marshes in the middle sub-Boreal period.

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)