Product Description

There has always been interest in how animals live their lives --- it is easy for us to identify with them. But there are many remarkable stories about plants that deserve to be told. The Nature of Plants tells how plants adapt to the challenges of their habitats. Plants may live in places that provide too little rainfall, yet they thrive, either by evading drought, like the animals that live in deserts, or by tolerating the scarcity. There are plants that use other plants, climbing on them, strangling some, living in their leafy canopies, or parasitizing them. And The Nature of Plants explores the love-hate relationships that plants have with animals, some feeding on plants but others drawn into serving plants by pollinating them, scattering their fruits and seeds, or being eaten themselves. The mostly hidden associations that plants have with bacteria and fungi are also revealed. Illustrated throughout with superb color photographs, it is written in a way that is clear to anyone who wishes to understand the life of plants.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #662745 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 314 pages

From Booklist
Whether they procreate courtesy of fire or flying insects, bury their roots in sand or salt, thrive in toxicity or bask in treetops, many plants demonstrate a prodigious ability to adapt to punitive conditions and external provocations. In this superlative and erudite resource, the authors present the causes and effects of such biological modifications through a vivid and intricate investigation of the realm of environmental challenges plants must overcome to survive. From the frigid wastelands of the arctic tundra to the parched expanses of unyielding deserts, habitats that cannot support other life forms frequently manage to manifest hospitable conditions sufficient to support some forms of plant life. Positioning their findings within a broad context that examines evolutionary patterns, climatological conditions, and geographic influences, the authors provide pertinent background information, thereby enhancing one's understanding and appreciation of plants' tenacious characteristics. Although written in a clear and approachable manner, this scholarly exploration is best suited to the serious student of botany and horticulture. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"A plant lover's dream. ... Recommended for anyone with an interest in plants and their ability to survive in even the harshest of climates. All topics are explained with diverse examples and fantastic color photographs." Lee Luckeydoo, Sida, Contributions to Botany, Summer/Fall 2006 (Contributions to Botany )

"Tells dramatic stories of how plants struggle throughout their lives, how they adapt to their often-inhospitable surroundings, and how they change when their surroundings change."
—Science News, May 21, 2005 (Science News )

"The book, studded with stunning photographs, is divided into nine botanically based but very readable chapters."
—Lynne Terry, Oregonian, May 5, 2005 (Oregonian )

A plant lover's dream. ... Recommended for anyone with an interest in plants and their ability to survive in even the harshest of climates. All topics are explained with diverse examples and fantastic color photographs. Lee Luckeydoo, Sida, Contributions to Botany, Summer/Fall 2006 (Contributions to Botany )

Tells dramatic stories of how plants struggle throughout their lives, how they adapt to their often-inhospitable surroundings, and how they change when their surroundings change. Science News, May 21, 2005 (Science News )

The book, studded with stunning photographs, is divided into nine botanically based but very readable chapters. Lynne Terry, Oregonian, May 5, 2005 (Oregonian )

From the Author
Rob Lucas is a lecturer in the Natural Resources Centre of the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful book
Most of the color photographs are by co-author Rob Lucas. They are just sumptuous--stunning even--and carefully chosen, and illustrative of the great diversity of plant life on earth. There is a slight bias in favor of the unique biota of New Zealand which is understandable since Lucas is from New Zealand. He and his colleague, UC Berkeley botany PhD John Dawson, have written several books on the flora of New Zealand, one of which won the Natural Heritage Prize. This book too ought to win some sort of prize since it is so gorgeously illustrated, so engagingly written, and so carefully edited.

They take the widest possible focus in introducing the reader to plants from around the world and from many different habitats, from deserts to swamps, from the Arctic to the Amazon. They begin in the first chapter, "The Freeloaders: Plants Using Plants," with parasitic plants such as the tree-dwelling epiphytes, of which the familiar mistletoe is an example. This sets the tone for the book, the idea being to show how plants make a living in the world and how they interact with other plants and with animals, and how they meet the challenges of their environments. In other words, as the title has it, the authors explain and illustrate "The Nature of Plants." As such this book is an excellent introduction to the nontechnical aspects of botany, giving the reader the sort of information about plants that would especially appeal to weekend gardeners and others (like myself) who love plants but have had no academic training in botany.

However, this is no "plants for dummies" sort of book. Scientific nomenclature is used throughout, and precise numbers about plant sizes and other aspects of their lives, including rainfall and temperatures, are given in both metric terms and US equivalents. References are made to more comprehensive academic tomes, and there is a glossary of specialized terms.

Here is a short notice of facts that I found especially interesting:

It is well known that fire can be the catalyst for the germination of some kinds of seeds, and indeed, there are seeds that germinate only after a fire. On page 136 the authors explain that "In some pines, the tips of the woody scales of the cones are glued together with resin. Fire melts the resin, and the scales are able to separate."

They also report that "it has been discovered that smoke alone can break the dormancy of seeds of many heathland species in South Africa and Australia." Even more surprising is that in the chaparral in California (where I have hiked many times) "It is believed that some of the shrubs manufacture toxins that leach into the soil with rain and inhibit the germination of seeds. Fire destroys these toxins, and the seeds then germinate abundantly. In following years, the herbs steadily diminish as shading increases and toxins from the shrubs build up in the soil." ( p. 135)

We have all heard of a swarm (or "plague") of locusts, but the one the authors describe here is truly incredible: "One such swarm," they write, "in eastern Africa was described as being more than 30 m (100) feet deep on a front 1.6 km (1 mile) wide that took 9 hours to pass by." Imagine that you are a poor farmer with a crop just ready for harvest, and then the locusts descend. What could you do? (p. 207)

By the way, there is an amazingly beautiful photo on the opposite page (206) of a cabbage tree moth on a dead cabbage tree leaf illustrating not only the moth's camouflage but some of the incredible beauty that nature is capable of. The colors are fantastic. As lovers of flowers know, no chemist can match the ability of nature to produce color in such vivid and arresting hues.

As I was reading this and admiring the beautiful photos I couldn't help but think about plants as our benefactors, and to marvel at how they have come to an accommodation (in some cases a clear symbiosis) with the pesky animals that want to eat them, and how they have in many cases learned to use the animals to their advantage as pollinators and seed dispersers. It gives me hope for humankind to think that if plants can make such clever give-and-take arrangements (without a hint of rancor) with those who would be their enemies, surely we can do the same with our fellow humans.

A brief comment
As my fellow Top 50 reviewer, Dennis Littrell, has already said it better than I, I just wanted to add a brief comment, mainly because a few years ago I once spent a wonderful three weeks travelling around New Zealand observing its plant and animal life, and many of the examples of plants in the photos are from this country, since one of the authors is from there, and I've seen much of New Zealand's fascinating and diverse fauna and flora myself.

As Dennis mentions, the photographs are superb, along with the well written and interesting text. The book is not just about the local flora however, as the author discusses interesting and important plants from around the world.

One major difference between the ecologies of the northern and southern hemisphere is that conifers forests dominate the north, whereas the large climax trees in the south, especially in South American and New Zealand, are southern hemisphere hardwood beech trees, of which there are a number of species. Although not as tall or as massive as the sequoias and redwoods of the Pacific Coast, they can still grow to over 200 feet in height.

Interestingly, 60 million years ago the giant sequoias and redwoods were circumpolar and once dominated the whole northern hemisphere boreal forests, but today are restricted to just a few strips of land in California and Oregon. No one knows why such huge and seemingly invulnerable trees as sequioas, which can have bark several feet thick, can hardly be killed by fire, are impervious to insects because of their thick and tannic acid rich bark, and which are the largest living things, have been dying off.

Although, as I said, the book isn't just about New Zealand plant life, I have to add a fascinating tidbit about that. New Zealand is a very rainy and wet country mostly, especially in the south (Milford Sound is the rainest place in the world at sea level with 28 feet of rain per year, about the same as the top of Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii, but that's at 14,000 feet). In fact, it's almost unremittingly green, because there are few plants with colored flowers there. There are a few exceptions, such as the well known "New Zealand Christmas Tree," metrosideros excelsea, which has red flowers, but it's the exception. Most have white flowers because they are fertilized by night flying moths. Colored flowers are actually for bees, and New Zealand broke off and separated from the original supercontinent before bees evolved, hence the reliance of many New Zealand plants on moths. I found this quite interesting and only learned it after I'd arrived on the island, although I was partly trained as a botanist in college and grad school.

Overall, a wonderfully illustrated and well written book on the diversity of plant life on this increasingly ecologically fragile planet of ours, and a truly beautiful and diverse one botanically that hopefully some of which will survive the locust plague of our species centuries hence.