In a recent paper (Annals of Botany 107: 909–916; 2011) Tomlinson and Huggett indicated that reiterative branches in the pine Wollemi nobilis develop from groups of seemingly differentiated cells in axillary positions, not from ‘axillary meristems’, i.e. cells that retain a meristematic appearance. Burrows contends that previously published information indicates that axillary meristems are present in both main stem and branch leaf axils of W. nobilis and that this is also the situation in investigated species in the other genera of the Araucariaceae (Agathis and Araucaria). Tomlinson and Huggett provide a response to this critique.
