The emerging field of plant physiology - continued...

VI.
The annual Jahresberichte somehow shed light on this period where different attitudes of what botanical science actually meant collided - lifeless phrases and superficialities vs. premature opinions. This probably seems to provide the most tellingly and acurate statement of the period. It was not an argument about the materiality of the research objects as both Link and Schleiden surely could agree, e.g. on the importance of observation and the relevance of chemistry and physics to botanical and physiological research. Headmost it was an argument of the basic principles of the respective discipline. Both groups of botanists were persuing to understand the life of plants, and by undertaking physiological research to lay the simplest and most general foundation of the science of botany. In that respect they did not differ too much.

It by no means had been the case that older botanists were solely working at a time "where plant-describing was comfourtly flourishing" - as Julius Sachs would later paraphrase the time. As the first volume, and also all sucessive seven volumes of the Jahresberichte edited until 1847, covered almost all relevant contributions of the many botanists, chemists and physiologists working in the field, both generations took part in the defining work of the new field of plant physiology.

This physiology in its earliest stages, and without actually having a precise name and meaning that later generations would find for it, did initially progress by seeing, be it through the active engagement of the eyes of the many observers, visual experimentation or the microscopical study of the processes thought to be associated with the diverse and omnipresently experienced living features of plants.

The older generation of botanists, for which Link might act as a representative, did not adhere to the older conviction but rather managed to provide an itself establishing and defining discipline a panel taking into account the works of Schleiden and also Theodor Schwann (1810-1882), who together and in competition with Meyen and Schleiden put forward a theory of cell development.