A joint project by The Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections & The Royal Ontario Museum.

A treasury like no other Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grew around them, organizing the specimens into collections. Known as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor. Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into this unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world’s flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today. At its heart, Herbarium is a compelling reminder of one of humanity’s better impulses: to save things—not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.

In the five years since the publication of Molecular Systematics of Plants, the field of molecular systematics has advanced at an astonishing pace. This period has been marked by a volume of new empirical data and advances in theoretical and analytical issues related to DNA. Comparative DNA sequencing, facilitated by the amplification of DNA via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), has become the tool of choice for molecular systematics. As a result, large portions of the Molecular Systematics of Plants have become outdated. Molecular Systematics of Plants II summarizes these recent achievements in plant molecular systematics. Like its predecessor, this completely revised work illustrates the potential of DNA markers for addressing a wide variety of phylogenetic and evolutionary questions. The volume provides guidance in choosing appropriate techniques, as well as appropriate genes for sequencing, for given levels of systematic inquiry. More than a review of techniques and previous work, Molecular Systematics of Plants II provides a stimulus for developing future research in this rapidly evolving field. Molecular Systematics of Plants II is not only written for systematists (faculty, graduate students, and researchers), but also for evolutionary biologists, botanists, and paleobotanists interested in reviewing current theory and practice in plant molecular systematics.

This stunningly beautiful book throws open the closed doors of the Sydney herbaria, and the history of Australia's flora.