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Book Reviews
doi:10.1093/aob/mcq121
Trees and forests: a colour guide
Brian G. Bowes. ed. 2010.
London: Manson Publishing. £60
(hardback). 288 pp.
The popularity of trees and forests
as subjects for books is apparent
from the number of such books to
be found in the natural history
sections of libraries and bookshops.
Publications range in type from
coffee-table books illustrated with
magnificent photographs of trees,
to the scientific, which deal with
the biology of trees and the utilisation of timber. This book
announces on its cover that it deals with biology, pathology,
propagation, silviculture, surgery, biomes, ecology and
conservation. It falls somewhere between the two extremes,
being accessible to the general reader, while summarising
some serious scientific issues.
The editor, Brian Bowes, has assembled 14 chapters using a
total of 16 authors selected for their expertise in the topics
covered. After an introductory chapter (Brian Bowes) summarising the types of trees, their architecture, evolution and their
importance for civilisation, there is a section of four chapters
dealing with the world distribution of forests: northern boreal
and montane (Aljos Farjon), temperate deciduous and rain
forests (Hugh Angus), temperate mixed evergreen forests
(Stephen D. Hopper, Erika Pignatti Wikus, Sandro Pignatti)
and tropical and sub-tropical rain and dry forests (Ghillean
T. Prance). Each chapter describes the environment in each
zone and describes briefly its predominant tree species.
This section is followed by a chapter on tree morphology,
anatomy and histology, which gives an elementary account of
secondary thickening in woody stems (Brian Bowes). This is
a good basic account, but general readers may find parts of
this difficult as it assumes a knowledge of the cell types
found in wood.
The fourth section deals with tree pathology, with the first
chapter in this section describing the role of cell wall polymers in disease resistance in woody plants (Christopher
T. Brett). This presents a good introduction to basic cell
wall structure and considers the wall and its components in
an original way. This is followed by a chapter on microbial
and viral pathogens and plant parasites of plantation and
forest trees in which Stephen Woodward describes the different major diseases that affect trees, their economic importance and management. A chapter by Clair Ozanne on
insect pests complements the chapter by Woodward and
completes this section.
The final section of the book consists of five chapters that
cover aspects of general and practical forestry, beginning
with forest ecology (Peter A. Thomas), silvicultural systems
(Peter Savill and Nick Brown), tree pruning and surgery
(David Thorman), tree propagation (Brent McCown and
Thomas Beuchel) and forest and woodland conservation
(Ghillean T. Prance).
vi
Annals of Botany 106: vi–vii, 2010
Available online at www.aob.oxfordjournals.org
Inevitably given the limited space available coupled with
the fact that at least half of each page is occupied by photographs, the resulting chapters can best be described as tasters
that will stimulate the reader to seek out more specialised
works. In this they will be aided by a reading list for each
chapter provided at the end of the book. Each topic is presented clearly and the book is well-written, very readable,
and accessible to the general reader. However, as is also
inevitable in attempting to condense as much as possible
into very limited space, generalisations have been made
here and there that the specialist reader may find oversimplified and with which they may disagree.
As would be expected from the book’s sub-title, it is what
is usually described as lavishly illustrated. The photographs
are in fact so numerous that it seems to have been necessary
to keep them small, typically about 8 × 5 cm. In general the
quality of the photographs is very good, but a number of
those showing views of woodland or forest really should
have been printed at a greater magnification to make their
distinctive features clearer. For example, in the photograph
of New Zealand’s temperate mixed evergreen forest, the
nikau palms it is claimed it shows are simply not distinguishable from the surrounding nondescript green mass of foliage.
This is, however, a minor criticism of a book that will be very
useful for students of economic botany in particular and as an
introduction to forestry, arboriculture and conservation.
J. R. Barnett
E-mail [email protected]
doi:10.1093/aob/mcq122
Published electronically: 28 May 2010
An introduction to plant fossils
Cleal CJ, Thomas BA. 2009.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. £29.99 ( paperback). 248 pp.
As the title suggests, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of plant fossils
and is aimed at undergraduate
students and introductory-level
researchers in botany, biosciences
and earth sciences. In effect the
book is an update on the now
classic (i.e. dated and out of print)
introductory text books by Chester Arnold (1947) and
Harlan Banks (1970), noting that other current texts either
fall below (e.g. Kenrick and Davies, 2004) or sail above
this level (e.g. Taylor et al., 2009), with the latter representing a definitive reference work that is to a certain extent
impregnable to introductory readers. So, we have a gap in
the market, but does this fill the role? I think it does.
The book combines historical accounts of subjects that
shaped present understanding alongside descriptions of the
major plant fossil groups and taxa, and also provides
up-to-date syntheses of the materials presented as well as