Plants: Diversity and Evolution

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Cambridge University Press, 17 авг. 2006 г.
Plants are so much part of our environment that we often take them for granted, yet beautiful, fascinating and useful plants are everywhere, from isolated moss colonies on stone walls to vast complex communities within tropical rainforests. How did this array of form and habitat come about, and how do we humans interact with the plant kingdom? This unique new textbook provides a refreshing and stimulating consideration of these questions and throws light in a new way on the complexity, ecology, evolution and development of plants and our relationship with them. Illustrated throughout with numerous line diagrams and beautiful colour photographs, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the fascinating lives that plants lead and the way in which our lives are inextricably linked to theirs. It will be particularly useful to students seeking a more ecological and process-oriented approach than is available in other plant science textbooks.

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Стр. 97 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Стр. 56 - The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations ; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo. Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding...
Стр. 338 - Stand prepar'd to heighten yours. Soul. I sup above, and cannot stay To bait so long upon the way.
Стр. 387 - ... the world. How well it is washed ! The sea is hardly less dusty than the ice-burnished pavements and ridges, domes and canons, and summit peaks plashed with snow like waves with foam. How fresh the woods are and calm after the last films of clouds have been wiped from the sky! A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.
Стр. 400 - For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.
Стр. 393 - Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.
Стр. 393 - During my residence in the Amazon district I took every opportunity of determining the limits of species, and I soon found that the Amazon, the Rio Negro and the Madeira formed the limits beyond which certain species never passed. The native hunters are perfectly acquainted with this fact, and always cross over the river when they want to procure particular animals, which are found even on the river's bank on one side, but never by any chance on the other. On approaching the sources of the rivers...
Стр. 5 - Whatever their components, an indispensable aspect of living beings is that the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network.

Об авторе (2006)

Martin Ingrouille is a senior lecturer in botany in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London. He teaches and co-ordinates courses in plant science, evolutionary biology and conservation biology.

Bill Eddie is a lecturer in botany and ornithology for the Open Studies programme of the Office of Lifelong Learning at the University of Edinburgh.

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