Roots: the dynamic interface between plants and the Earth. * Abe J, ed. 2003. * Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. * {euro}165 (hardback). 460 pp

All but five of the 46 contributionsin this symposium volume have been published already as a specialissue in Volume 255 of Plant and Soil in 2003. They are reproducedin exactly the same format and with the same pagination as inthe journal. To anyone who has access to Plant and Soil thisbook would therefore not be a sensible purchase. This is allthe more true because the editor has not provided any commentaryon the papers or subdivided them     

Vascular organization of angiosperms. A new vision * Andre J.-P. 2005. Enfield, New Hampshire: Science Publishers, Inc. $59.50 (hardback), $39.0 (paperback). 140 pp.

The technique ofmicrocasting to unravel certain aspects of the three-dimensionalanatomy of animals (especially man) and plants goes back a longtime, but it is only recently that it has been perfected intoa fine art and a useful operational tool in plant anatomy, moreor less simultaneously by Jean-Pierre André in Franceand by Tomoyuki Fujii and co-workers in     

Principles of soil and plant water relations. * Kirkham, M. B. 2005. * Boston: Elsevier Academic Press. $79.95 (hardback). 500 pp.

The word order of the title isan important clue to the focus and main strength of Kirkham'sbook, which is its exploration of water movement in the soiland how it is measured. Plant water relations take a back seat,accounting for approximately one-third of the 27 chapters. Unlikethe title, the book's cover image of a savannah-like tree issomewhat misleading, for the examples, methods and instrumentationdiscussed in the text are chiefly agronomic, with an emphasison corn (maize) and wheat. The book's preface     

Methods in molecular biology, volume 286. Transgenic plants. Methods and protocols. * Pena L, ed. 2005. * Totowa, New Jersey: Humana Press. $115 (hardback). 448 pp

This publication has much to offerin terms of valuable information for the student beginning ontheir quest for knowledge, but also for the more experiencedscientist in terms of emphasizing the problems and subsequentconsequences of the generation of transgenic crops. The bookbegins with     

Plant ecology. * Schulze ED, Beck E, Muller-Hohenstein K. 2005. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. $89{middle dot}95 (hardback). 702 pp.

This book (a translation fromSchulze et al., 2002) is one of the most comprehensive textbooksof plant ecology so far. The authors aim to ‘for the firsttime bring together and clearly organize the large subdisciplinesof plant ecology’ and, to a large extent they have succeeded.The book is well written, and its more than 500 illustrationsare beautifully laid out and well chosen to help the readerunderstand the theory. It is clearly suitable not only     

Margaret Mee's Amazon. Diaries of an artist explorer. * Margaret Mee. 2003. * Woodbridge Suffolk, UK: Antique Collectors' Club. * {pound}29{middle dot}50 (hardback). 320 pp, 400 colour illustrations

‘Delight’ said CharlesDarwin in his diaries in 1832, ‘is a weak term to expressthe feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wanderedby himself in a Brazilian forest’. These feelings musthave been those which drove Margaret Mee to explore the Brazilianjungles on numerous expeditions between 1958 and 1964, creatingwonderful pictures despite all kinds of difficulties encounteredin this hostile world. And these feelings were also those Ihad when I read this book: delight about her precise drawingsand life-like paintings, which are extremely expressive from     

Programmed cell death in plants. * Gray J, ed. 2004. Oxford/London: Blackwell Publishing/CRC Press. {pound}95 (hardback). 287 pp

This book is a timely and updatedsummary of the research that is ongoing in the subject of programmedcell death as it happens in plant systems. In the past 15 years,the necessity and conserved nature of an intrinsic suicide programin cells have been widely recognized by biologists and the studyof cell death mechanisms and signal regulation have become intensiveareas of research. As pointed out in the introductory     

Plant-pollinator interactions: from specialization to generalization * Waser NM, Ollerton J. eds. 2006. * Chicago: Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. $45 (paperback). 488 pp.

Highly specializedpollination systems, such as figs and their wasp or orchidsthat deceive bees in trying to make them mate with their floralorgans, are intuitively appealing to most people and have, therefore,gained far more attention both in popular and scientific literaturethan the more generalized pollination systems. For a long timethe dominant view was that many, or perhaps even most, plant–pollinatorinteractions were specialized. In 1996 Waser and his colleaguestried to stir things up by writing an article in which theyargued that, in contrast to common belief, generalization waswidespread in plant–pollinator systems. Ten     

New frontiers in bryology - physiology, molecular biology and functional genomics. * Wood AJ, Oliver MJ, Cove DJ, eds. 2004. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. {pound}63 (hardback). 203 pp.

This book is a collection of papersfrom the major researchers involved in physiological, molecularand genomic research on bryophytes, mainly, although not exclusively,using the moss Physcomitrella patens. This is a growing areaof research and the book aims to provide ‘... a synopsisof the outstanding basic research being conducted using mossesas a model multi-cellular eukaryote’. Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) are an importantand often neglected group     

Book Review: The Development of Animal Form: Ontogeny,Morphology, and Evolution. By Alessandro Minelli,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, U.K. 2003, (Paperback, 2000). 339 pp, $75.00 (hardback)

International Journal of Primatology -