Plants in Action: Adaptation in Nature, Performance in Cultivation

Front Cover
Macmillan Education AU, 1999 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 664 pages
Plants in Action explores basic principles underlying plant biology in natural and managed communities throughout Australasia. By providing up-to-date and useful perspectives on plant science, this book will appeal immediately to upper level undergraduates in Universities and tertiary Institutes of Technology where plant physiology forms part of their degree coursework in Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry and Environmental Sciences. Postgraduate students as well as professional plant scientists will also find much useful source material in this textbook because the narrative is built on credible experiments and richly illustrated with original data. Numerous vignettes provide a human background to new knowledge that is readily transparent and structured for easy 'grazing'. In both name and actuality, Plants in Action embodies practical applications of plant science in nature and global commerce. World markets are already crowded with high quality texts on plant physiology. Basic principles are thus well covered, but neither application of principles, nor acknowledgment of Australasian contributions to plant science is well covered in texts from the northern hemisphere. Where practical, but without jingoism, Australasian examples and case studies are used to illustrate original science as well as practical applications of that science; hence the subtitle: Adaptation in Nature, and Performance in Cultivation. Table of contents: I. Perspectives on plant science. II. Processes and resources for growth. III. Coordination of growth and reproduction. IV. Ecophysiology in natural and managed communities.
 

Contents

Carbon dioxide assimilation and respiration 45
root function 83
cell growth 114
Vascular integration and resource storage 148
a quantitative approach 186
Further reading
Plant growth and options for reproduction 223
Physical cues for growth and reproduction 252
Ecophysiology in natural and managed communities
Introduction
Further reading
Chapter 4
cell growth
References 614
Index 650
Further reading

chemical signalling in plant development 284

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information