The Evolutionary Biology of Plants

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Summary: What a fantastic book - everything you always wanted to know
Review: A friend of mine told me about this book and said I had to read it. I am not a science student, but I found the book in my school library and read it anyway. It's a great book and I'm sure glad my friend told me about it. Plants are truly interesting, perhaps more so than animals because plants are so different from everything we are taught about in high school biology. Niklas's book is also well written. He speaks directly to the reader, using simple words to describe really complicated biological issues. Everything I always wondered about is found in this book. I've recommended it to my friends. I think everybody ought to know about the 'green world' that surrounds us!

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Summary: This is a fascinating and well written book ¿¿ a must read.
Review: I am a student of animal biology and this book was assigned by one of my professors as a textbook. I knew nothing about plants until I read this book, and I really dreaded the idea of having to learn about plants. Niklas's book opened my eyes to the wonder and fascination of plant biology as well as the wonders of plant evolution, which are very different from what most of us have been taught about animals. I've read this book from cover to cover, at least twice. And each time I've picked up something new and exciting to think about. All of my friends in the class agree with me - - this is a great book and people should pay attention to it.

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Summary: This is a very well written and informative book
Review: The author has written an up to date and thoughtful book about evolution using plants as examples of all major ideas. This book should be read by any one interested in evolution or plant biology. The text is easy to read, with a minimum of jargon, and the book is well illustrated. I was especially interested in how the author combined information for the study of living plants with the information from the fossil record. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: What a fantastic book - everything you always wanted to know
Review: The rarity of up-to-date general surveys on this topic makes this a valuable book, but I think a better job could have been done. It starts out in a promising way, with an excellent introduction to the issues and problems of evolution from the perspective of plant biology, and I found this to be the most enlightening section of the book. The writing at that point is clear and purposeful. However, things start ramping down from there. Plant evolution is dealt with in a piecemeal fashion: certain topics, notably the author's own concern with the evolution of morphology, are treated at length; other, equally important, topics, e.g., symbioses, are skipped almost entirely (there is not a single word on the evolution of mycorrhizal or nitrogen-fixation symbiosis, and very little about the various angiosperm-insect symbioses). Interactions with diseases, parasites and herbivores are virtually ignored. This seriously detracts from the book's clear intent to sketch the "big picture" in plant evolution, and the author's increasingly complicated and disconnected prose does not help matters. But for someone thirsting for knowledge on plant evolution, the book provides plenty of things to think about, and the ample bibliography points the way to more.