The quiescent centre is a group of cells, up to 1,000 in number, in the form of a hemisphere, with the flat face toward the root tip of vascular plants.
In 1953, during the course of analysing the organization and function of the root apices, Frederick Albert Lionel Clowes (born 10 September 1921), at the School of Botany (now Department of Plant Sciences), University of Oxford, proposed the term ‘cytogenerative centre’ to denote ‘the region of an apical meristem from which all future cells are derived’.
This term had been suggested to him by Mr Harold K. Pusey, a lecturer in embryology at the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the same university.
The results of these experiments were striking and showed that: the root which grew on following the excision was normal at the undamaged meristem side; the nonexcised meristem portion contributed to the regeneration of the excised portion; the regenerated part of the root had abnormal patterning and ‘remained so for a time considered sufficiently long for the complete replacement of all the derivatives of the initials’.
Using roots of Zea mays and Triticum vulgare, this indeed turned out to be the case, and he was then able to state that ‘the cytogenerative centre is conceived as the part of the apical meristem from which all future tissues are derived’.