Plant Systematics is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated text, covering the most up-to-date and essential paradigms, concepts, and terms required for a basic understanding of plant systematics. This book contains numerous cladograms that illustrate the evolutionary relationships of major plant groups, with an emphasis on the adaptive significance of major evolutionary novelties. It provides descriptions and classifications of major groups of angiosperms, including over 90 flowering plant families; a comprehensive glossary of plant morphological terms, as well as appendices on botanical illustration and plant descriptions. Pedagogy includes review questions, exercises, and references that complement each chapter. This text is ideal for graduate and undergraduate students in botany, plant taxonomy, plant systematics, plant pathology, ecology as well as faculty and researchers in any of the plant sciences. - The Henry Allan Gleason Award of The New York Botanical Garden, awarded for "Outstanding recent publication in the field of plant taxonomy, plant ecology, or plant geography" (2006) - Contains numerous cladograms that illustrate the evolutionary relationships of major plant groups, with an emphasis on the adaptive significance of major evolutionary novelties - Provides descriptions and classifications of major groups of angiosperms, including over 90 flowering plant families - Includes a comprehensive glossary of plant morphological terms as well as appendices on botanical illustration and plant description

The first and so far only Plant Geography of Chile was written about 100 years ago, since when many things have changed: plants have been renamed and reclassified; taxonomy and systematics have experienced deep changes as have biology, geography, and biogeography. The time is therefore ripe for a new look at Chile’s plants and their distribution. Focusing on three key issues – botany/systematics, geography and biogeographical analysis – this book presents a thoroughly updated synthesis both of Chilean plant geography and of the different approaches to studying it. Because of its range – from the neotropics to the temperate sub-Antarctic – Chile’s flora provides a critical insight into evolutionary patterns, particularly in relation to the distribution along the latitudinal profiles and the global geographical relationships of the country’s genera. The consequences of these relations for the evolution of the Chilean Flora are discussed. This book will provide a valuable resource for both graduate students and researchers in botany, plant taxonomy and systematics, biogeography, evolutionary biology and plant conservation.

The legacy of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) looms large over the natural sciences. His 1799–1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist Aimé Bonpland set the course for the great scientific surveys of the nineteenth century, and inspired such essayists and artists as Emerson, Goethe, Thoreau, Poe, and Church. The chronicles of the expedition were published in Paris after Humboldt’s return, and first among them was the 1807 “Essay on the Geography of Plants.” Among the most cited writings in natural history, after the works of Darwin and Wallace, this work appears here for the first time in a complete English-language translation. Covering far more than its title implies, it represents the first articulation of an integrative “science of the earth, ” encompassing most of today’s environmental sciences. Ecologist Stephen T. Jackson introduces the treatise and explains its enduring significance two centuries after its publication.

Before any other influences began to fashion life and its lavish diversity, geological events created the initial environments--both physical and chemical--for the evolutionary drama that followed. Drawing on case histories from around the world, Arthur Kruckeberg demonstrates the role of landforms and rock types in producing the unique geographical distributions of plants and in stimulating evolutionary diversification. His examples range throughout the rich and heterogeneous tapestry of the earth's surface: the dramatic variations of mountainous topography, the undulating ground and crevices of level limestone karst, and the subtle realm of sand dunes. He describes the ongoing evolutionary consequences of the geology-plant interface and the often underestimated role of geology in shaping climate. Kruckeberg explores the fundamental connection between plants and geology, including the historical roots of geobotany, the reciprocal relations between geology and other environmental influences, geomorphology and its connection with plant life, lithology as a potent selective agent for plants, and the physical and biological influences of soils. Special emphasis is given to the responses of plants to exceptional rock types and their soils--serpentines, limestones, and other azonal (exceptional) substrates. Edaphic ecology, especially of serpentines, has been his specialty for years. Kruckeberg's research fills a significant gap in the field of environmental science by connecting the conventionally separated disciplines of the physical and biological sciences. Geology and Plant Life is the result of more than forty years of research into the question of why certain plants grow on certain soils and certain terrain structures, and what happens when this relationship is disrupted by human agents. It will be useful to a wide spectrum of professionals in the natural sciences: plant ecologists, paleobiologists, climatologists, soil scientists, geologists, geographers, and conservation scientists, as well as serious amateurs in natural history.

"This spectacular book does full justice to the Compositae (Asteraceae), the largest and most successful flowering plant family with some 1700 genera and 24,000 species. It is an indispensable reference, providing the most up-to-date hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships in the family based on molecular and morphological characters, along with the corresponding subfamilial and tribal classification. The 2009 work not only integrates the extensive molecular phylogenetic analyses conducted in the last 25 years, but also uses these to produce a metatree for about 900 taxa of Compositae. The book contains 44 chapters, contributed by 80 authors, covering the history, economic importance, character variation, and systematic and phylogenetic diversity of the family. The emphasis of this work is phylogenetic; its chapters provide a detailed, current, and thoroughly documented presentation of the major (and not so major) clades in the family, citing some 2632 references. Like the Compositae, the book is massive, diverse, and fascinating. It is beautifully illustrated, with 170 figures, and an additional 108 cladograms (all consistently color-coded, based on the geographic range of the included taxa); within these figures are displayed 443 color photographs, clearly demonstrating the amazing array of floral and vegetative form expressed by members of the clade." --NHBS Environment Bookstore.

Plant Systematics, Third Edition, has made substantial contributions to plant systematics courses at the upper-undergraduate and first year graduate level, with the first edition winning The New York Botanical Garden's Henry Allan Gleason Award for outstanding recent publication in plant taxonomy, plant ecology or plant geography. This third edition continues to provide the basis for teaching an introduction to the morphology, evolution and classification of land plants. A foundation of the approach, methods, research goals, evidence and terminology of plant systematics are presented, along with the most recent knowledge of evolutionary relationships of plants and practical information vital to the field. In this new edition, the author includes greatly expanded treatments on families of flowering plants, as well as tropical trees (all with full-color plates), and an updated explanation of maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference algorithms. Chapters on morphology and plant nomenclature have also been enhanced with new material. - Covers research developments in plant molecular biology - Features clear, detailed cladograms, drawings and photos - Includes major revisions to chapters on phylogenetic systematics and plant morphology