[Plant-education] Re: Botany book recommendation?

[David R. Hershey]

A current undergraduate textbook in plant physiology is Plant
Physiology, 4th edition (2006). It is edited by Taiz and Zeiger with
chapters written by various experts.

There are some free readings online:
http://www.plantphys.net/

The Tansley Reviews in the journal, New Phytologist, cover a wide range
of plant topics and are open access. Reviews from 2004 to 2006 are
available here:
http://www.newphytologist.org/tansley.htm

Tansley Reviews from 1997 to 2003 are available here, use the search
box to find them:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/nph?cookieSet=1

All but the current year of articles in the journal Plant Physiology
are available online for free. A few articles within the last year are
open access as well. Just reading the abstracts or introductions to
articles provides a lot of good information.

http://www.plantphysiol.org/contents-by-date.0.shtml

A great deal of current plant research deals with Arabidopsis. Here is
an open access Arabidopsis Book:
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-static&name=arabidopsis_ebook


David R. Hershey
http://www.angelfire.com/ab6/hershey/bio.htm


Alan Meyer wrote:
> I have gotten interested in biology in the last couple of years
> and would like to do some serious reading in botany.  I'm
> interested in understanding both the low level chemistry and
> the larger physiology of plants.
>
> So far I have read Neil Campbell's _Biology_, followed
> by a fairly simple book on general, organic and biochemistry,
> and just today finished Alberts et. al. _Molecular Biology
> of the Cell_ (a five month effort!)
>
> I'm looking for something that is up to date, authoritative,
> theoretical, and treats the reader as a serious student
> for whom spoon feeding is not desirable.
>
> I've got a 1999 6th edition of _Biology of Plants_ by Peter
> Raven et. al.  I see a 2004 edition has come out, but they've
> cut back the coverage.
>
> Is Raven's a good book to read?  Is there something clearly
> better?
>
> I would appreciate any comments or recommendations.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>     Alan