Botany Illustrated: Introduction to Plants, Major Groups, Flowering Plant Families

Front Cover
Springer US, Mar 29, 2006 - Science - 278 pages

Botany Illustrated, Second Edition

This easy-to-use book helps you acquire a wealth of fascinating information about plants. There are 130 pages with text, each facing 130 pages of beautiful illustrations. Each page is a separate subject. Included is a coloring guide for the realistic illustrations. The illustration pages are composed of scientifically accurate line drawings with the true sizes of the plants indicated. Using colored pencils and the authors’ instructions, you can color the various plant structures to stand out in vivid clarity. Your knowledge of plants increases rapidly as you color the illustrations.

There is a balanced selection of subjects that deal with all kinds of plants. However, the emphasis is on flowering plants, which dominate the earth. Drawings show common houseplants, vegetables, fruits, and landscape plants. They also show common weeds, wild flowers, desert plants, water plants, and crop plants.

Botany Illustrated has three sections. An Introduction to Plants gives you facts on everything from cells to seeds. The Major Groups section is from fungi to algae, ferns, conifers, and flowering plants. In Flowering Plant Families are magnolias to asters, and water-plantains to orchids, with the families of major interest included. You will find plants used for food, ornamentals, lumber, medicines, herbs, dyes, and fertilizers, whether wild or poisonous, or of special importance to our Earth’s ecosystem.

Topics that will be of interest to you include:

  • Why leaves ‘turn’ color in autumn
  • How certain plants devour insects
  • How a flower develops into a fruit with seeds
  • Why some plants only flower at certain times of the year
  • How water, nutrients, and sugars move within a plant, including tall trees
  • How flowers are pollinated
  • The ‘inside’ story of how plants manufacture their own food
  • How plants are named and classified
  • How vines ‘climb’
  • Why ‘pinching’ makes plants ‘bushy’
  • How plants reproduce sexually
  • Why shoots grow towards light
  • How specific leaf colors can indicate specific mineral deficiencies

Botany Illustrated is especially easy to use because of its great flexibility. You can read the text and look at the drawings, read the text and color the drawings, or just enjoy coloring the drawings. No matter where your interests lead you, you will quickly find your knowledge of plants growing! Thus, this beautiful book will be of great value to students, scientists, artists, crafters, naturalists, home gardeners, teachers, and all plant lovers.

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About the author (2006)

Janice Glimn-Lacy, B.S. Botany, is a graduate of the University of Michigan. Since 1976 she has been a free-lance botanical illustrator and is Instructor of Botanical drawing and illustration for The University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens Adult Education Program. She is a member of the Michigan Botanical Club and the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. She has illustrated Practical Botany (published by Reston), Michigan Trees (The University of Michigan Press), several Ph.D. theses, and many botanical journal articles.

Peter B. Kaufman, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biology Emeritus in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) at the University of Michigan and is currently Senior Scientist, University of Michigan Integrative Medicine Program (MIM). He received his B.Sc. in Plant Science from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. in 1949 and his Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of California, Davis in 1954 under the direction of Professor Katherine Esau. He did post-doctoral research as a Muellhaupt Fellow at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar at University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada; University opf Saskatoon, Saskatoon, Canada; University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado; Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; USDA Plant Hormone Laboratory, BARC-West, Beltsville, Maryland; Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan; Lund University, Lund, Sweden; International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Banos, Philippines; and Hawaiian Sugar Cane Planters’ Association, Aiea Heights, Hawaii. Dr. Kaufman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology (ASGSB) in 1995. He served on the Editorial Board of Plant Physiology for ten years and is the author of more than 220 research papers. He has published eight professional books to date and taught popular courses on Plants, People, and the Environment, Plant Biotechnology, and Practical Botany at the University of Michigan. He has received research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) BARD Program with Israel, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Xylomed Research, Inc, and Pfiser Pharmaceutical Research. He produced with help of Alfred Slote and Marcia Jablonski a 20-part TV series entitled, “House Botanist.” He was past chairman of the Michigan Natural Areas Council (MNAC), past president of the Michigan Botanical Club (MBC), and former Secretary-Treasurer of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology (ASGSB). He is currently doing research on natural products of medicinal value in plants in the University of Michigan Medical School in the laboratory of Stephen F. Bolling, M.D. and serves on the research staff of MIM.

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