Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants [Hardcover]

Armen Takhtajan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231100981 | ISBN-13: 978-0231100984 | Publication Date: April 15, 1997 0

The culmination of more than fifty years of research by the foremost living expert on plant classification, Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants is an important contribution to the field of plant taxonomy. In the last decade, the system of classifying plants has been thoroughly revised. Instead of describing every individual family, Takhtajan includes descriptions in keys to families, which he calls "descriptive keys." The advantage of descriptive keys is that they give both the characteristic features of the families and their differences. The delimitation of families and orders drastically differs from the one accepted by the Englerian school and from the one accepted in Arthur Cronquist's system. Takhtajan favors the smaller, more natural families and orders, which are more coherent and better-defined, where characters are easily grasped, and which are more suitable for information retrieval and phylogenetic studies, including cladistic analysis (because it reduces polymorphic codings).

Editorial Reviews

Review

Would I buy this book? Absolutely, for the morphological data alone. Is it the final word in agiosperm phylogeny? Probably not. It is very much a synthesis in progress, and we are again greatly indebted to the author for moving us along to the next step in this synthesis. -- Review

From the Back Cover

Armen Takhtajan is among the greatest authorities in the world on the evolution of plants. This book culminates almost sixty years of the scientist's research of the origin and classification of the flowering plants. It presents a continuation of Dr. Takhtajan’s earlier publications including "Systema Magnoliophytorum" (1987), (in Russian), and "Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants" (1997), (in English). In his latest book, the author presents a concise and significantly revised system of plant classification (`Takhtajan system') based on the most recent studies in plant morphology, embryology, phytochemistry, cytology, molecular biology and palynology. Flowering plants are divided into two classes: class Magnoliopsida (or Dicotyledons) includes 8 subclasses, 126 orders, c. 440 families, almost 10,500 genera, and no less than 195,000 species; and class Liliopsida (or Monocotyledons) includes 4 subclasses, 31 orders, 120 families, more than 3,000 genera, and about 65,000 species.This book contains a detailed description of plant orders, and descriptive keys to plant families providing characteristic features of the families and their differences. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 620 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231100981
• ISBN-13: 978-0231100984
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,149,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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