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As seen on PBS's American Spring LIVE, the award-winning author of Buzz and Feathers presents a natural and human history of seeds, the marvels of the plant kingdom.'The genius of Hanson's fascinating, inspiring, and entertaining book stems from the fact that it is not about how all kinds of things grow from seeds; it is about the seeds themselves.'-- Mark Kurlansky, New York Times Book Review We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life: supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and pepper drove the Age of Discovery, coffee beans fueled the Enlightenment and cottonseed sparked the Industrial Revolution. Seeds are fundamental objects of beauty, evolutionary wonders, and simple fascinations. Yet, despite their importance, seeds are often seen as commonplace, their extraordinary natural and human histories overlooked. Thanks to this stunning new book, they can be overlooked no more. This is a book of knowledge, adventure, and wonder, spun by an award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller and the hard-won expertise of a field biologist. A fascinating scientific adventure, it is essential reading for anyone who loves to see a plant grow.

The taxonomic identification of individual seeds and fruits of wild and cultivated plants is not always straightforward. The specialist literature and botanical reference collections can be helpful, and knowing where to begin reading and comparing can save a considerable amount of time. We wrote A Manual for the Identification of Plant Seeds and Fruits to make your search easier. It describes the inflorescence(s) and infructescence(s) seen in each of a set of 19 plant families, as well as the morphology of its seeds and fruits (with special emphasis on fruit typology); the dispersal units (diaspores); and, if present, heterocarpism and seed dimorphism. The manual is richly illustrated with 460 colour photos of inflorescences, infructescences, seeds, and fruits. Each entry concludes with a concise seed atlas that depicts the variation in the individual plant family's seed and fruit forms. A Manual for the Identification of Plant Seeds and Fruits includes the following plant families:AmaranthaceaeApiaceaeAsteraceaeBoraginaceaeBrassicaceaeCaryophyllaceaeConvolvulaceaeCyperaceaeFabaceaeGeraniaceaeJuncaceaeLamiaceaeMalvaceaePlantaginaceaePoaceaePolygonaceaeRanunculaceae

Seed Biology, Volume II: Germination Control, Metabolism, and Pathology is a part of a three-volume treatise, which aims to bring together a large body of important information on seed biology. Organized into five chapters, this book begins with a discussion on environmental control of germination and its biological significance. Separate chapters follow that discuss physiology and metabolism of seeds with specific dormancy and anomalous storage history, as well as those germinated under abnormal conditions. This work will be useful to various groups of research biologists and teachers, including agronomists, plant anatomists, biochemists, ecologists, entomologists, foresters, horticulturists, plant pathologists, and plant physiologists.

The Plant Seed: Development, Preservation, and Germination presents papers delivered on the symposium on plant seed, held at the University of Minnesota in 1978. The volume discusses the development, preservation, and germination of the plant seed. The topics of this compendium focus on various aspects of the plant seed. The first group of papers describes genetic, hormonal, and molecular events associated with seed development, with particular attention given to the molecular biology of storage protein formation; the second group of papers examines the physiological and genetic aspects of germplasm preservation. The final group of papers examines the molecular aspects of seed germination. The book will be of interest to botanists, biologists, plant breeders, plant physiologists, plant pathologists, and geneticists.