Publisher's Synopsis
While studying botany for about 18 years, I came to the idea of restructuring the"classical" course into a more logical sequence of themes which you will find in this textbook. There were two main ideas that I attempted to embed here: one was to put as much plant-related information as possible into an evolutionary context, and the other was to explain complicated problems with simple words and metaphors. There are very few botany books that are trying to do the same. Among them, I would highly recommend Manetas, Ya. (2012)"Alice in the Land of Plants. Biology of Plants and their importance to Planet Earth". One extremely important concept to understand: plants are not animals! Obviously, this phrase has many important meanings. First of all, since we humans are animals, it is much easier for us to understand animal life than plant life. Many terms that are associated with animal life (like"stomach" or"blood pressure") are generally well known, even intuitively. Learning botany as a beginner requires to speak about plants, and to speak, you have to learn the botanical language. This is why you need to know a vast amount of terms, so be prepared to work hard. This textbook started with students' lecture notes but now it contains much more information. All figures are either original or modified from those sources where a license allows it(e.g., Wikimedia).
