David Barden

Starting from life's beginnings 3.5 billion years ago, this book tells the story of how important plant groups evolved, showing the role that symbiosis, photosynthesis, Darwinian selection, hybridisation, mass extinctions, and other phenomena have played in producing the plants that we see today. The book explains and illustrates the relationships between plants and other organisms—especially insects—and presents the latest research on how key species groups, such as algae, mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants, evolved, drawing on evidence from the fossil record and recent insights gleaned from molecular evidence. Several plant groups including buttercups, orchids, and grasses are singled out for in-depth discussion and used to illuminate important mechanisms including the co-evolution of plants and pollinators and the formation of new species by hybridisation. The book then examines how humans have used and modified plants for their own ends and how these efforts have transformed the structure of plants such as wheat, rice, maize, and brassicas. This is followed by an examination of the effect of mass extinctions on plant life and the lessons that we might learn from this as we face climate change and biodiversity loss today. Throughout the text, complex ideas in plant biology are explained clearly and engagingly for a general audience, including over 150 diagrams and photographs illustrating key concepts and conveying the remarkable beauty of this fascinating aspect of life on Earth.