The paleoecological history of the Americas is as complex as the region is broad: stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, the New World features some of the most extraordinary vegetation on the planet. But until now it has lacked a complete natural history. Alan Graham remedies that with A Natural History of the New World. With plants as his scientific muse, Graham traces the evolution of ecosystems, beginning in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million years ago) and ending in the present, charting their responses to changes in geology and climate.
By highlighting plant communities’ roles in the environmental history of the Americas, Graham offers an overdue balance to natural histories that focus exclusively on animals. Plants are important in evolution’s splendid drama. Not only are they conspicuous and conveniently stationary components of the Earth’s ecosystems, but their extensive fossil record allows for a thorough reconstruction of the planet’s paleoenvironments. What’s more, plants provide oxygen, function as food and fuel, and provide habitat and shelter; in short, theirs is a history that can speak to many other areas of evolution.
A Natural History of the New World is an ambitious and unprecedented synthesis written by one of the world’s leading scholars of botany and geology.
In this fourth and final installment in the Aquatic and Standing Water Plants of the Central Midwest series, veteran botanist Robert H. Mohlenbrock identifies aquatic and wetland plants in eight central Midwestern states, which include Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky (excluding the Cumberland Mountain region), Missouri, and Nebraska.
Nelumbonaceae to Vitaceae: Water Lotuses to Grapes contains 346 highly informative and technically accurate illustrations as well as ecological information, nomenclature, and keys for plants in the aforementioned families, including white water lily, fireweed, smartweed, mild water pepper, hawthorn, and wild strawberry. Mohlenbrock identifies and describes each plant in concise and readable prose and indicates its usual habitats and the states in which it occurs.
As with previous volumes, Mohlenbrock organizes each species into three groups: truly aquatic plants, which spend their entire life with their vegetative parts either completely submerged or floating on the water’s surface; emergents, which are usually rooted under water with their vegetative parts standing above the water’s surface; and wetland plants, which live most or all of their lives out of water.
With Nelumbonaceae to Vitaceae, Mohlenbrock completes the four-volume series organizing and identifying wetland plants in the central Midwest. The botanical series will aid many, from teachers and students to state and federal employees, focused on conservation efforts and mitigation issues.
Over the past three hundred years New England's landscape has been transformed. The forests were cleared; the land was farmed intensively through the mid-nineteenth century and then was allowed to reforest naturally as agriculture shifted west. Today, in many ways the region is more natural than at any time since the American Revolution. This fascinating natural history is essential background for anyone interested in New England's ecology, wildlife, or landscape.
In New England Forests through Time these historical and environmental lessons are told through the world-renowned dioramas in Harvard's Fisher Museum. These remarkable models have introduced New England's landscape to countless visitors and have appeared in many ecology, forestry, and natural history texts. This first book based on the dioramas conveys the phenomenal history of the land, the beauty of the models, and new insights into nature.
New Jersey is exceptionally rich in ferns, as three centuries of naturalists have recognized. Both amateur and professional botanists will welcome this new, complete, fully illustrated guide to the state's ferns and fern allies (the lycopods and horsetails). After an introduction to fern classification and nomenclature, the history of fern collecting, and the ecology and distribution of ferns within New Jersey, the authors describe eighty-three species, in thirty genera, and thiry-two hybrid forms (more than any other state). They include a fascinating account of the rare curly-grass fern, Schizaea pusilla, "New Jersy's most famous plant."
For each species, the authors provide a detailed drawing and comments on taxonomy, habitat, chromosome counts, habits of growth, and status as endangered species. Distribution maps show not only where plants have been collected, but also the time period for the most recent date of collectionÐÐa convenient way of showing the plant's spread or depletion. Throughout, the book reflects the latest research by fern experts.
An essential field guide and reference for naturalists, botanists, hikers, gardeners, and conservationists in New Jersey and the mid-Atlantic states.
This companion volume to Siri von Reis's previous exploration of ethnobotanical notes in the Harvard herbaria brings to light a new array of plants with drug or food potential, offering wide-ranging possible applications for pharmacologists, chemists, botanists, and even anthropologists. Following the same criteria as in earlier investigations, the authors have examined the vast holdings of The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium to select little-known plant uses and to record any note suggesting biodynamic constituents--i.e., those having effects on living tissue--from skin irritants and poisons and medications of any kind to foods, beverages, and spices. They have also included species whose applications suggest other kinds of unreported chemical activity, plants associated with magic or ritual which affected people in some unusual way.
Listing the notes in the order in which the species were found in the collection, family by family, the authors call attention to similar characteristics in related species and families having biodvnamic properties in common. Each entry begins with the Latin name of the specimen, cites the country in which it was collected, the collector's name, and his held number for the plant, and then quotes the ethnobotanical or other note of interest.
While in itself a valuable reference work in the search for clues to useful plants, New Plant Source for Drugs and Foods also will enhance the value of the first volume by allowing a comparison of entries.
This comprehensive volume, commissioned by the International Dendrology Society, covers more than eight hundred tree species that have been introduced to cultivation in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America in recent decades. Up until now there has been no comparable source of information. Featuring horticultural notes from a network of growers and enthusiasts, backed up by data from recent scientific studies, the book presents a remarkable amount of information in a fashion accessible to amateurs as well as specialists. More than one hundred line drawings and nearly six hundred photographs—many portraying rarely seen trees—offer aids to identification. Introductory chapters covering conservation and modern techniques of tree-growing, and a comprehensive glossary and bibliography, round out the volume and make New Trees incomparable—and indispensable.
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