THEORY VS PRACTICE 1. “If one assumes that the ancestral angiosperm chromosome number is 5–7, as often suggested, then modern Gossypium hirsutum, for example, should have 5–7 times 144, or 720–1008 chromosomes in its haploid complement, in the absence of massive, repeated chromosome number reduction, instead of the 26 it actually contains.”
http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320