In a delightful book called Garden Facts and Fancies, Alfred C. Hottes, former associate editor of Better Homes and Gardens, notes that “plants stand so patiently in the fields that we are accustomed to think that they are cahn and immovable, whereas there is a feverish activity going on at all times. ”1 I believe that the same can be said of plant-sciences research. As noted in our last plant-...

1Research plant pathologist, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center, Parlier, CA 93648; 2formerly Research soil scientist, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center, currently Extension specialist, Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616; and 3formerly Agricultural engineer, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center...

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PLANT SCIENCES By WILLIAM C. DARRAH, Tutor in the Department of Biology and Research Curator in the Botanical Museum, Harvard University. This book offers a concise, humanistic account, of the nature of the plant kingdom. It is intended for use by students in a half-year or one-semester course in botany or plant biology. Emphasis is placed on these four recent development...

Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå (S.P., B.R.A.); Department of Forest Genetic and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 90183 Umeå, Sweden (T.M.); Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, FIN– 70211 Kuopio, Finland (E.K., J.D.B.); and Department of Plant Molecular Biology, U...

The plant kingdom is divided into the lower plants (blue-green algae, green algae, the bryophytes consisting of mosses and liverworts, and the euglenaphytes) and the higher plants (which mainly comprise the vascular plants). Higher plants are grouped into the pteridophytes (ferns) and their relatives, and the two classifications of seed plants, the angiosperms and the gymnosperms. The former co...