Overview

This is an essential reference for describing, measuring and classifying the foliage of flowering plants. The presented system provides long-needed guidelines for characterizing the organization, shape, venation, and surface features of angiosperm leaves. In contrast to systems focusing on reproductive characters for identification, the emphasis is on macroscopic features of the leaf blade including leaf characters, venation, and tooth characters. The advantage of this system is that it allows for the classification of plants independently of their flowers, which is especially useful for fossil leaves (usually found in isolation) and tropical plants (whose flowering cycles are brief and irregular, and whose fruits and flowers may be difficult to access). An illustrated terminology including detailed definitions and annotated illustrations is the focus of the classification system, the aim of which is to provide a framework with comparative examples to allow both modern and fossil leaves to be described and classified consistently. Published in association with the New York Botanical Garden.

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9781845935849

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This guide is a major contribution, and it will revolutionize the study of leaves in many (increasingly interrelated) fields of biology. Because it truly encompasses the diversity of dicot leaves, this guide will be of use to paleobiologists, systematists, anatomists, functional ecologists, ecophysiologists, and researchers of biological networks generally. No previous work to my knowledge provides this level of diagnostic characterization of leaf morphological features. The presentation of concepts for the description of the leaf venation is also a major advance. I am not exaggerating when I say that for those of us who study leaves, this guide is analogous to the first manual on human anatomy, and this guide means to us what that manual must have meant for medical researchers! With this guide, researchers can begin new careers determining the evolution, functional significance, and ecological correlation of the diversity of leaf architectures, as here are set out a large number of leaf traits in one place, clearly and accessibly, and the descriptions are consistent, easily applied, and rigorous. Lawren Sack, University of California, Los Angeles This book is a clear, well illustrated, logically rigorous, and eminently practical distillation of the authors' vast collective experience in devising more powerful and objective methods for the identification of fossil angiosperm leaves. Not only will it be a boon for paleobotanists working on fossil leaves, but it should also stimulate greater appreciation of the utility of leaf characters in reconstruction of the phylogeny and evolution of living angiosperms and field identification of plants in both temperate and tropical regions. James A. Doyle, University of California, Davis Since the earliest days of scientific botany, subtle variation in leaf form has been both informative and confusing for specialists and nonspecialists alike. The Manual of Leaf Architecture places comparative studies of living and fossil leaves on a new and more secure footing. It will be indispensable for anyone using the leaves of living or fossil plants in their morpho-developmental, systematic, or ecological research. Professor Sir Peter Crane FRS, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor, University of Chicago This manual is an essential tool for leaf architecture studies . . . providing valuable information for systematics, conservation, ecology, and such groundbreaking paleoecological research as estimating past climates using fossil leaves. . . . In addition to the detailed and precise leaf character definitions that form the main body of the manual, the book includes examples of fully described leaves. voucher data for the leaf images, and instructions for clearing leaves. The volume is profusely illustrated with cleared leaf images and line drawings, and it is well referenced and indexed. Choice, November 2009

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