What Is a Plant?

This book provides a nice overview of plants. It identifies plant characteristics, their structures, the function of those structures, adaptations which plants have made to stay alive, how plants make food, novel ways plants meet their nutritional needs, germination, pollination and fertilization, seed dispersal and uses of seeds. It includes information on carnivorous and parasitic plants, vegetative reproduction, and forests. The book's one serious shortcoming occurs at the end of the text. In the "Threats to Plants" section, the information under wetlands and forests is a reiteration of commonly held environmental beliefs, several of which have no scientific basis. The statement that tropical rainforests are being cut down to make room for cattle ranches is the most egregious. If this book is used, that is an area for discussion and to point out to students that just because a statement is in print does not make it true. (Tropical forests are cut down for a type of slash-and-burn agriculture which cannot be sustained in fragile tropical soils. Grazing cattle is the last use of areas cleared when no other crops can be produced.) It is unfortunate that the author did not stop before including this section of the book.