"An outstanding and enjoyable introduction to botany, whether the reader is a gardener, or just a garden visitor." -Bloomsbury Review
What happens inside a seed after it is planted? How are plants structured? How do plants reproduce? The answers to these and other questions about complex plant processes can be found in the bestselling Botany for Gardeners. Written in accessible language, this must-have guide allows gardeners and horticulturists to understand plants from the plant's point of view. Now in its third edition, Botany for Gardeners has now been expanded and updated, and includes an appendix on plant taxonomy, a comprehensive index, and dozens of new photos and illustrations.
The essential overview of plant botany, perfect for both beginning and advanced gardeners. Brian Capon received a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Chicago. For thirty years he was a professor of botany at California State University, Los Angeles. The progress of a plant's growth is a summation of its responses to separate, but interacting components of the environment in which it is living. The plant may be favored with adequate water and optimum temperatures but be limited in its ability to photosynthesize by inadequate illumination, perhaps because of shading from taller plants or buildings. Another plant may receive full sunlight, plentiful irrigation, and sufficient fertilizer, but still not express its growth potential because prevailing temperatures are too high or too low. Even if climatic and soil conditions are ideal, stunting may occur because pathogenic fungi or predatory insects have invaded the plant. Microorganisms and animals are, indeed, environmental factors to be reckoned with. Other life forms, being ordained components of habitats occupied by plants, exercise both beneficial and harmful effects, as do temperature, rainfall, and sunlight.
It becomes obvious that, of a host of interacting environmental factors, only one need challenge a plant's tolerances in order to limit its growth. The greater the number of unfavorable conditions acting in concert, the more profound the effect. That is why, in nature, where so many variables are at work, plants rarely reach their full potential. Happily, in a garden, one has the opportunity to improve on a few factors limiting plant development and, consequently, to cultivate larger, healthier specimens than usually exist in the wild.
Plants generally die when too many limiting factors overwhelm their physiological capabilities for survival. Or, they may simply succumb to oldage processes, principally to a genetically programmed deterioration of cells and tissues, called senescence (Latin for "to grow old"). Once this process has been initiated, even the best care cannot save a plant. In annual species, senescence takes place within one year of growth; in biennials, in the second year. In perennial species, senescence of a localized nature occurs in older organs before they die and are discarded; it takes many years before the process finally consumes the entire organism.
When a plant becomes dormant, it prepares for the approach of seasons when combined adverse environmental conditions are bound to limit growth or threaten death. Entry into dormancy entails a reduction of physiological activities to the minimum level needed for survival. At that time the plant may also discard vulnerable parts, such as leaves prone to damage from frost or the effects of drought. Thus, dormant biennial or perennial temperate-zone species are well prepared to face winter's low temperatures, strong winds, cloudy days, and snow cover. Some desert perennials undergo the same dormancy processes to withstand the long, hot, dry months of summer.
Typically, a dormant plant has well-protected meristems - the sites of renewed growth when environmental conditions improve. Vascular and cork cambia are surrounded by cork tissue, which is not only a superior insulator but, beca
