United States
£ GBP
This unique and attractive textbook combines the beauty of macroscopic pictures of plant stems with the corresponding colorfully stained images of anatomical micro-structures. In contrast to most botanical textbooks, it presents all the stem characteristics as photographs and shows the microscopic reality.
The amount of text is reduced to a minimum, and the scientific information is highlighted with short legends and labeled photographs, allowing readers to focus on the pictures to easily understand how the anatomical structures relate to genetic, ecological, decomposition and technical influences. It includes a chapter devoted to simple anatomical preparation techniques, and further chapters showing the cell content, cell walls, meristematic tissues and stem structures of all major taxonomic units and morphological growth forms in various ecological and climatic regions from subarctic to equatorial latitudes, as well as structures of fossil, subfossil and technically altered wood.
The Plant Stem appeals to students and researchers in the fields of plant anatomy, taxonomy, ecology, dendrochronology, history, plant pathology, and evolutionary biology as well as to technologists.
1 Introduction
2 Preparation techniques - Making anatomical structures visible
3 Morphology of the plant body
4 Cellular composition of the plant bodies
5 Structure of cell walls and cell contents
6 Primary, secondary and tertiary meristem
7 Stem anatomical structures of major taxonomic units
8 Evolution of stems
9 Anatomical adaptions to permanent changed environmental conditions
10 Anatomical adaptions to temporarily changed environmental conditions
11 Coexistence of algae, fungi and vascular plants
12 Wood decay
13 Fossilization, permineralization, coalification, carbonization and wetwood conservation
Fritz Hans Schweingruber studied at the University of Bern, Switzerland and did postdocs by Hal Fritts in Tucson, Arizona, after which he taught wood anatomy and dendrochronology at the University of Basel for 26 years. At the same time he was leader of the Research Group Tree Rings and Environment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Forest, Snow and Landscape in Birmensdorf, Switzerland where he constructed the Northern hemispheric dendroclimatological densitometric network and wood anatomical books from Europe, Russia and the Sahara. In 1986 he founded the International dendroecological field week and in 2001 the International dendroanatomical weeks.
Annett Börner is a geo-ecologist with a special interest plant ecology. She has worked for more than 15 years as an editor and designer in the field of scientific publications, in print and web media. She specialises in science communication, and her clients include a number of major research institutes in Europe and Australia. She lives in Adelaide, Australia.
