Product Description

Green plants are all around us. We are totally dependent on them for food; we cultivate them for our pleasure; and we use them to our advantage in a vast number of ways. This is a lively, nontechnical account of how green plants live, grow and...reach for the sun. It covers everything you need or want to know about plants, including how plants satisfy their nutritional and energy needs, how they direct and promote their growth, development and death, and how they react to the daily and seasonal variations and stresses in their environments. Finally, the author describes how they attract and repel other living organisms and how we exploit them for our own use in food and medicine. From their ability to take energy from sunlight to make their own food to their amazing range of life-sustaining, death-defying strategies, John King explains why plants dominate our planet. This is not just a book for avid gardeners and naturalists. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand why the earth is green.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #479024 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-13
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .84 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

From Amazon.com
Who would have thought that plants behave like squirrels and bears? Yet many do, as we can tell by watching a tree's autumn colors arrive. The yellow and green pigments, carotenoids, are hidden by the green photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll; only when the deciduous plant retrieves this chlorophyll for winter storage do the lighter colors show through. You'll learn about this process, about why one bad apple can spoil a whole barrel, why the Amazon rainforest matters, and myriad other matters of plant life in John King's lively natural history, Reaching for the Sun. The text is technically dense but highly readable.

Review
'This is a book to be heaped with laurels, to be awarded the palm. This is a book to go bananas about.' Tim Radford, The Guardian

'Reaching for the Sun will answer all sorts of pressing questions ... is fun as well as informative. It is ideal for the general reader and for A-level students.' Barrie Goldsmith, New Scientist

'John King is an enthusiast and his breathless enthusiasm is liberally scattered throughout this book, which covers a very wide spectrum of plant physiology ... an excellent text for a general reading list for those about to start university courses in biology.' Deri Tomos, Trends in Plant Science

'An accessible account for lay people.' Nature

'Dr King brings excitement and wonder to what is arguably the most active area in botany today.' The American Society of Plant Physiologists '... a very readable slim book about plant physiology. It exemplifies the ideas that the popular can also be educational ...'. Times Higher Education Supplement

Ingram
Humans are totally dependent on plants for food; we cultivate them for pleasure; and we use them to our advantage in a vast number of ways. This book offers a wealth of information about plants, including how they satisfy their nutritional growth, development, and death, and how they react to the daily and seasonal variations and stresses in their environments.