The Plants [antikvár]

ntroduction Although we accept as axiomatic the fact that plants are green, their green I pigment, chlorophyll, is remarkable in the biological world. It makes plants, quite literally, providers of energy to the world's host of living organisms—man and all the other animals, and even non-green plants. For it is chlorophyll that gives plants the unique abihty to utilize the energy of sunlight for the manufacture of food; and this in turn means that fungi and animals can use plant compounds for energy and for their own building materials, either directly or through complex food chains. And to man, of course, plants furnish thousands of other useful products beyond the primary benefits of food. We know from the fossil record that plants appeared on this earth hundreds of millions of years ago. Although the actual origin of living matter continues to be a controversial question, it is likely that the earliest living "organisms", whose composition is unknown, derived the energy for growth and reproduction by simple chemical means. Presumably they broke down chemical compounds in their watery environment; eventually they utilized the sunlight by means of photoreceptive pigments. However it occurred, from some unknown, primitive green organism the continuous process of evolution has given us all the wonderfully diverse and fascinating world of plants that we live in today. They are found almost everywhere, and the adaptations they have made to special environments, as the cactus family has to deserts, are as extraordinary as anything in nature. As man learns more about plants, how they are constructed, how they function and react to their habitat, he also learns how to modify and even to control their growth and behaviour. It is scarcely necessary to point out the importance of this to our well-being. Hybrid corn, antibiotics, weed-killers and growth hormones are only some of the developments which have reached far beyond the plant sciences into our public health, our national economy and even our sociology. Dr. Frits Went, an outstanding botanist with an unusually broad understanding of his subject, has joined with the Editors of Life to produce a book which beautifully summarizes and illustrates the basic structure, activities and behaviour of plants. This is no superficial work, although author and editors have dropped a hint here and there to indicate how much more there is to the whole story than can be told in a book of this size. I am sure that many readers, once they have been introduced to botany in these pages, will find themselves with an irresistible urge to pursue further many of these fascinating bypaths and ramifications of a science that is basic to our world. William Campbell Steere Director, The Mew York Botanical Garden Professor of Botany, Columbia University