The biological function of endosperm is to support the developing and germinating
embryo, and as such is believed to have played an important role for
the evolutionary success of angiosperms. The ontogeny of the endosperm remained
an enigma until the discovery of double fertilization a littlemore than
a hundred years ago. Soon thereafter, plant anatomists revealed an unusual pattern
of development: many types of endosperm go through a syncytial phase
before becoming cellular. The mechanism underlying the cellularization process
of these so-called nuclear endosperms was discovered only recently, and
most of the molecular and developmental biological insight into endosperms
has been gained only in the last two decades. To my knowledge, this book is
the first comprehensive treaty dedicated in its entirety to endosperm developmental
and molecular biology.