Plants: Food, Medicine, and the Green Earth

by Allaby, Michael; Garratt, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780816061020
• ISBN10: 0816061025
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-06-01
• Publisher: Facts on File

Summary

Life would be impossible without plants: they provide food, either directly or in the form of plant-eating animals and they supply many of the fibers we use, from the timber to build homes and the fuel for heating and cooking to the wood used to make tools and furniture. It is not surprising, therefore, that people have been studying plants for thousands of years.

Author Biography

Michael Allaby is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 90 books, mainly on science, natural history, and environmental topics. Among other professional affiliations, he is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Association of British Science Writers. He is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate, Revised Edition (cited by Choice as recommended).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. xii
The Father of Botany	p. 1
Aristotle and His Natural History	p. 2
Theophrastus, the Father of Botany	p. 4
Medicine and Plants	p. 6
Pedanius Dioscorides and His Catalog of Medicinal Plants	p. 7
What Is a Pharmacopoeia?	p. 8
Alexander the Great and His Empire	p. 10
Pliny, Preserving Knowledge	p. 13
John Ray His Encyclopedia of Plant Life	p. 16
Herbals and Physic Gardens	p. 19
Shennong, the Divine Farmer	p. 20
The Aztec Herbal	p. 22
Albert the Great and the Structure of Plants	p. 24
Konrad von Megenberg and His Illustrated Herbal	p. 26
Conrad Gessner the German Pliny	p. 27
Rembert Dodoens and the First Flemish Herbal	p. 30
John Gerard His Herbal	p. 32
Nicholas Culpeper and His Herbal Best Seller	p. 34
Leonhard Fuchs Fuchsia, and the First Botanical Glossary	p. 38
The Bauhin Family	p. 42
Monastic Gardens	p. 44
The Apothecaries' Garden at Chelsea	p. 45
The Doctrine of Signatures	p. 48
Botanical Gardens and Herbaria	p. 51
Identifying Plants: The Herbal Becomes the Flora	p. 51
Formal Gardens, Restoring Order to a Chaotic World	p. 53
Lancelot ôCapabilityö Brown	p. 56
Luca Ghini How to Press Flowers	p. 57
The Rise of the Herbarium	p. 60
Pisa, Padua, and Florence, the First Botanical Gardens	p. 62
Carolus Clusius, the Leiden Botanical Garden, and the Tulip Tulipomania	p. 67
Sir Henry Capel, Princess Augusta and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew	p. 67
Sir Joseph Banks, Unofficial Director of Kew	p. 70
Sir William Hooker, the First Official Director	p. 72
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the Royal Garden, Paris	p. 74
José Mutis and the Bogotá Botanical Garden	p. 76
Naming Plants	p. 79
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and the Grouping of Plants	p. 80
Carolus Linnaeus and the Binomial System	p. 83
How Plants Are Classified	p. 84
Augustin de Candolle and Natural Classification	p. 86
Adolf Engler and the Vegetation of the World	p. 88
The Plant Hunters	p. 90
Rhododendrons, Primulas, and Frank Kingdon-Ward	p. 91
David Douglas in North America and Hawaii	p. 94
Reginald Farrer and Alpine Plants	p. 96
George Forrest, Collecting in Yunnan	p. 98
Robert Fortune, Collecting in Northern China	p. 101
The Wardian Case	p. 103
Ernest Wilson, Collecting in China and Japan	p. 106
Geography of Plants	p. 109
Alexander von Humboldt and the Plants of South America	p. 110
Karl Ludwig von Willdenow and the Start of Scientific Plant Geography	p. 113
Franz Meyen Vegetation Regions	p. 115
Alphonse de Candolle and Why Plants Grow Where They Do	p. 116
Edward Forbes and the Significance of Ice Ages	p. 118
August Grisebach and Floral Provinces	p. 122
Carl Skottsberg and the Plants of Southern South America	p. 124
Plant Cultivation	p. 126
The Origins of Agriculture	p. 127
The Story of Wheat	p. 130
The Story of Rice	p. 132
The Story of Corn	p. 134
The Story of Cotton	p. 136
Captain Bligh, HMS Bounty, and the Breadfruit Trees	p. 138
Tea, and How Bodhidharma Stayed Awake	p. 141
Coffee, and Kaldi's Goats	p. 142
How Brazil Acquired Its Name	p. 143
Sir Hans Sloane, Milk Chocolate, and the British Museum	p. 144
How Rubber Moved to Asia	p. 146
Evolution of Plants	p. 149
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, Father of Paleobotany	p. 149
Charles Darwin and Evolution by Means of Natural Selection	p. 151
Asa Gray and the Discontinuous Distribution of Plants	p. 154
Göte Turesson and Plant Ecotypes	p. 157
Nikolai Vavilov and the Origin of Cultivated Plants	p. 158
Plant Physiology	p. 163
Nehemiah Grew, Plant Reproduction, and Comparative Anatomy	p. 163
Marcello Malpighi and the Microscopic Study of Plants	p. 165
Robert Hooke and the Cell	p. 166
Stephen Hales, the Movement of Sap, and Transpiration	p. 168
Joseph Priestley and ôDephlogisticated Airö	p. 171
Phlogiston	p. 173
Erasmus Darwin and the Botanic Garden	p. 175
Matthias Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Cell Theory	p. 177
Robert Brown, the Cell Nucleus, and the Study of Pollen	p. 178
Ecology of Plants	p. 181
Christen Raunkiær and the Way Plants Grow	p. 182
Josias Braun-Blanquet and the Sociology of Plants	p. 184
Gustaf Du Rietz and Communities of Plants	p. 185
Andreas Schimper and Plant Adaptation to the Environment	p. 186
Carl Georg Oscar Drude and Plant Formations	p. 188
Eugen Warming and the Principles of Plant Ecology	p. 189
Arthur Tansley and the Plants of Britain	p. 191
Biodiversity and Plant Conservation	p. 193
What Is Biodiversity?	p. 194
The Advance of Agriculture and the Retreat of Wilderness	p. 196
National Parks and Nature Reserves	p. 197
Saving the Tropical Forests	p. 199
Conclusion	p. 202
Glossary	p. 204
Further Resources	p. 211
Index	p. 215
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Life would be impossible without plants: they provide food, either directly or in the form of plant-eating animals and they supply many of the fibers we use, from the timber to build homes and the fuel for heating and cooking to the wood used to make tools and furniture. It is not surprising, therefore, that people have been studying plants for thousands of years.Plantsdetails this search for understanding and some of the individuals who have contributed to it.This new full-color volume begins in ancient Greece, where philosophers first speculated about the origin of plants and where the study of botany began. It also examines medicinal plants, which were considered the prime concern for the founders of botany. This book recounts the adventures of some of the most famous plant collectors as well as the system of plant classification used by today's scientists. Describing the early developments of ecology,Plantsends with an explanation of biodiversity and why scientists think it's important.Chapters include:

• The Father of Botany
• Herbals and Physic Gardens
• Botanical Gardens and Herbaria
• Naming Plants
• The Plant Hunters
• Geography of Plants
• Plant Cultivation
• Evolution of Plants
• Plant Physiology
• Ecology of Plants
• Biodiversity and Plant Conservation.

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Excerpted from Plants by Michael Allaby
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.