Metamorphosis of Plants

Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, known in English as Metamorphosis of Plants, was published by German poet and philosopher Johann [Wolfgang von Goethe] in 1790. In this work, Goethe essentially discovered the (serially) homologous nature of leaf organs in plants, from cotyledons, to photosynthetic leaves, to the petals of a flower. Although Sir [Richard Owen], the British vertebrate anatomist, is generally credited with first articulating a definition of the word "homology", it is clear that Goethe had already arrived at a sophisticated view of homology and transformation more than fifty years earlier.