Plant Biology

almost new version.

I bought this book because I seriously needed to catch up on the molecular and cellular side of biology, and found it the perfect reference for that. It explains genetics, photosynthesis, respiration, and other basics in enormous detail, and has less but still very useful material on plant defenses, domestication, and other matters cellular and biochemical. It is already getting a bit out of date, e.g. nothing in the defenses section on WRKY transcription factors, and the wheat domestication material is a bit old. (I am writing in 2013). But the basics are there. If you want a reference this is a fine one.If I were teaching a course in botany, though, I'd feel a need to foreground actual plants--as organisms. This book is almost entirely about basic molecular, biochemical, and cellular processes, to the virtual exclusion of the whole plant. The domestication chapter, for instance, is about genes, with little mention of other matters. This means that GM plants are described as a technical triumph, with no mention of possible downsides. Fair enough, in a book dedicated to cellular matters; the authors did not intend to write a book about the whole plant, still less its social implications. But I would warn botany professors that this book is highly specialized and should be used accordingly.

This was assigned as the textbook for an undergraduate plant biology course that I took at a liberal arts college.I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this book. When you open it for the first time, you'll be put off by the slightly blocky and gothic typography. You get used to it quickly, though, and I ended up liking it somewhat by the end of the semester.The figures are relevant and beautiful, many of them being very detailed charts or networks (e.g. the reproductive cycle of mosses and ferns). I found myself referring back to them often, and our professor often included them in his lecture slides.The breadth and depth of the topics, however, is spotty. For example, the beginning of the book spends maybe 35 pages painstakingly describing the evolution of life from primordial DNA, with no apparent aim. There is also a hilariously long and in-depth discussion of epigenetics, at the level of detail I would have expected from a genetics textbook.The book also sometimes suffered from laundry-listing chemical, species, or anatomical names instead of providing real insight. The best example of this that I can recall is the section on secondary metabolites. The page was covered with bolded terms like "alkaloid" and "terpenoid" and many specific examples thereof, but didn't offer much understanding of these topics (How and where are they produced? How is their production regulated? How does it differ among species? How does it change with stress? Where are these compounds stored? Etc.).I'm conflicted in my rating. Some parts of the book deserve four or even five stars. As a full-price primary textbook for a plant biology course, though, I think it deserves three.

There are a lot of nice pictures that are descriptive and explained. The only downside is that somtimes it seems like there is too much information and endless details, but it is not hard to understand.

This book did not help with the class I have in plant biology some stuff was missing