This volume includes an introduction to The Global Flora series and an overview of an angiosperm poster. The poster visually illustrates relationships of all angiosperm families (following APG IV) and flower images representing 269 plant families. The poster also lists important characters for major grades and clades.

Let the experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens guide you around the beautiful and mysterious world that is the plant kingdom. From regulating the air we breathe to providing food, clothes, fuels, and medicines - plants are fundamental to our lives. Discover an extraordinary diversity of species, which includes a grass that grows a meter a day, roots that breathe air, and "queen of the night" cactuses whose rare blooms vanish before dawn. In a combination of art and science, Flora celebrates plants from majestic trees to microscopic algae, explaining how they germinate, grow, and reproduce. It presents species that have evolved to accommodate pollinating insects such as the foxglove, and plants that have adapted to flourish in even the most hostile of habitats. Pierre-Joseph Redoute in the 18th-century was described as the "Raphael of flowers". Flora showcases his botanical paintings as well as those of Georg Ehret and others in this gorgeous visual celebration of plants through the ages. Whether you are a keen gardener, naturalist, or botany student, this beautiful book is a treat that will entice, inform, and amaze.

This volume represents a contemporary artist's tribute to the endangered plants and flowers of the world. It is both an ecological statement, and a call to arms. It focuses on plant life, of which an estimated 30-60,000 varieties are in imminent danger of extinction. The book's format - each illustration is given its own page - permits the reader to see the detail of each plant's structure. Captions describe the plants' history, uses, and status. Research and information about the threats to each plant's survival amplify the strong conservation message. The book provides both an appreciation of our remaining plant life, as well as an explanation of the facts of a relatively unreported global situation. An appendix provides more than 100 organizations to contact in the US and around the world.

A comprehensive resource to sustainability and its application to the environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security sectors Sustainability fills a gap in the literature in order to provide an important guide to the fundamental knowledge and practical applications of sustainability in a wide variety of areas. The authors – noted experts who represent a number of sustainability fields – bring together in one comprehensive volume the broad range of topics including basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and the socio-economic aspects of sustainability. In addition, the book covers applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, as well as carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects. Sustainability addresses the challenges the global community is facing due to population growth, depletion of non-renewable resources of energy, environmental degradation, poverty, excessive generation of wastes and more. Throughout the book the authors discuss the economics, ecological, social, technological and systems perspectives of sustainability. This important resource: Explores the fundamentals as well as the key concepts of sustainability; Covers basic concepts, impact assessment, environmental and socio-economic aspects, applications of sustainability in environmental, industrial, agricultural and food security, carbon cycle and infrastructural aspects; Argues the essentiality of sustainability in ensuring the propitious future of earth systems; and Authored by experts from a range of various fields related to sustainability. Written for researchers and scientists, students and academics, Sustainability: Fundamentals and Applications is a comprehensive book that covers the basic knowledge of the topic combined with practical applications.

This book represents the most comprehensive compilation of data on threatened vascular plants ever published. It includes the names of some 33,000 plant species determined to be rare or threatened on a global scale. Conservation assessments were provided by the IUCN Species Survival Commission, the National Botanical Institute (South Africa), Environment Australia, and CSIRO, The Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, together with hundreds of botanic gardens and botanists throughout the world. The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and the New York Botanical Garden have made major in-kind contributions.The result of 20 years work by botanists and conservationists around the world, it is intended as a conservation tool, a provider of baseline information to measure conservation progress and as a primary source of data on plant species. Most importantly, however, it provides the building blocks on which to base a worldwide effort to conserve plant species.

David Attenborough meets Lemony Snicket in The Big Bad Book of Botany, Michael Largo’s entertaining and enlightening one-of-a-kind compendium of the world’s most amazing and bizarre plants, their history, and their lore. The Big, Bad Book of Botany introduces a world of wild, wonderful, and weird plants. Some are so rare, they were once more valuable than gold. Some found in ancient mythology hold magical abilities, including the power to turn a person to stone. Others have been used by assassins to kill kings, and sorcerers to revive the dead. Here, too, is vegetation with astonishing properties to cure and heal, many of which have long since been lost with the advent of modern medicine. Organized alphabetically, The Big, Bad Book of Botany combines the latest in biological information with bizarre facts about the plant kingdom’s oddest members, including a species that is more poisonous than a cobra and a prehistoric plant that actually “walked.” Largo takes you through the history of vegetables and fruits and their astonishing agricultural evolution. Throughout, he reveals astonishing facts, from where the world’s first tree grew to whether plants are telepathic. Featuring more than 150 photographs and illustrations, The Big, Bad Book of Botany is a fascinating, fun A-to-Z encyclopedia for all ages that will transform the way we look at the natural world.

Flora Isabel MacDonald – politician, humanitarian, adventurer, and role model for a generation of women – was known across Canada and beyond simply as Flora. In her memoir, co-authored by award-winning journalist and author Geoffrey Stevens, she tells her personal story for the very first time. Flora! describes her amazing journey from her childhood and her time at secretarial school in Cape Breton, through her years in backroom Progressive Conservative politics, to elected office and her appointment as Canada’s first female minister of foreign affairs. Finally, she details her exceptional humanitarian work in India and in war-torn Africa and Afghanistan. Flora was driven by a lifelong conviction that there is nothing a woman cannot achieve in a world controlled by men, and she pursued this conviction in everything she did, carving a path for women in Parliament. She won international acclaim for bringing 60,000 Vietnamese refugees to Canada, and for engineering the rescue of six American hostages in Tehran in a top-secret collaboration with the CIA known as the Canadian Caper. She exposed the inhumane treatment of inmates at Kingston’s Prison for Women. She defied male chauvinists in the Progressive Conservative party by running for its leadership, and she introduced the Employment Equity Act to guarantee women equal access to federal jobs. Flora was brave. She was relentless. She was controversial. She was a force of nature. In her own words and drawing from interviews with those who knew her, Flora! grants us insight into this exceptional woman who changed the course of history.

From the best flowers to plant to encourage the industrious honeybee, to the right soils for your plants, from the easiest-to-grow varieties of courgette, to planning out your garden, RHS expert Guy Barter has curated a selection of graphics to instruct and inspire the green-fingered enthusiast. Packed with colourful graphics illustrating the how to’s, facts and trivia of gardening, this gorgeous book is the perfect gift for those who want to keep their garden green and healthy or looking to start their first garden. Packed with expert advice and over 100 original and unique illustrations, this beautiful visual reference book illuminates some of the trickier aspects of gardening as well as providing an introduction to the basics. â??Divided into the main themes of Planning, Planting, Choosing, Vegetables & Herbs, Fruit & Vines, and Practicalities; no matter where you are in your gardening abilities, Flora will ensure that you have all the know-how to start your garden and how to keep it green and healthy.