Customer Reviews

Green Plants: Their Origin and Diversity

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I was needing a book for an introductory botany course, covering plant evolution and structure. This book is too advanced for a course like that, but would be excellent for a 300 or 400 level course after students have the basics of evolution, taxonomy, and plant structures down. As a grad student, this is a text I'd love to have as a resource and will use as a reference text in my course...but it's too dry and the language is at too high a level for beginners. I am recommending this text to a professor of a botany class I was TA'ing for on Comparative Plant Anatomy, a 300 level course. So...if you want to be a botanist, grab it. If you want to teach plant anatomy and origins after an introductory botany course, this is perfect (best I've seen for the price, too!). If you want to teach an AP Botany course to high school students that only have a high-school biology background with no botany experience....not a good choice except as a strong reference. Book explains well, has excellent black-and-white diagrams, follows a thorough and logical pattern of evolution, but simply uses terminology too advanced for a lower-level course. They have trouble with the concepts of transcription and translation, much less page 103, "The passage of materials into the sporophyte is entirely through the apoplast since in all archeoniates the boundary between the two phases lacks plasmodesmata." Clear to me....but not to a beginner. I can't stress how good this book is for an advanced course or a serious botanist/taxonomist/plant geneticist/etc. GREAT upper-level/professional text!!!!!

This is a short book on plant diversity. There are lots of B/W drawings and diagrams. The book can be used in botany classes or for amateurs who want to learn more about plants.