Botany For Dummies

The easy way to score your highest grade in botany

Botany For Dummies gives you a thorough, easy–to–follow overview of the fundamentals of botany, helping you to improve your grades, supplement your learning, or review before a test. Covering typical topics in botany, this hands–on, friendly guide is your ticket to acing this required course for your major in biology, microbiology, zoology, or elementary education.

Breathe life into botany get an overview of the fundamentals of metabolism that are common to all living things, and understand why living things need matter and energy to grow and function

Get ready to photosynthesize find out how plants make food from carbon dioxide and water using energy from the sun, and how they break down that food through cellular respiration

Let′s talk about reproduction get the 411 on how plant cells divide, either to make exact copies of themselves for growth or to make eggs and sperm for sexual reproduction

The many uses of plants discover the importance of plants to the natural world, and the role they play in food, clothing, fuel, and medicine

Open the book and find:

An overview of plant biology

The basic chemistry you need to know to understand botany

Plain–English explanations of plant tissues

The structure of plants

The lowdown on photosynthesis

Plant reproduction and genetics

A look at how evolution has shaped the structure and behavior of plants

How we thrive on plants in everyday life

Learn to:

Understand how plants reproduce

Grasp the structure and function of plants

Score your highest grade in botany

Introduction.

Part I: Plant Basics.

Chapter 1: Exploring Botany.

Chapter 2: Peering at Plant Cells.

Chapter 3: Identifying Plant Tissues.

Chapter 4: Vegetative Structures: Stems, Roots, and Leaves.

Chapter 5: Reproductive Structures: Spores, Seeds, Cones, Flowers, and Fruits.

Part II: The Living Plant: Plant Physiology.

Chapter 6: Metabolism: How Living Things Get Energy and Matter.

Chapter 7: Photosynthesis: Making Sugar from Scratch.

Chapter 8: Cellular Respiration: Making Your Cake and Eating It, Too.

Chapter 9: Moving Materials Through Plants.

Chapter 10: Regulating Plant Growth and Development.

Part III: Making More Plants: Plant Reproduction and Genetics.

Chapter 11: Greening the Earth: Plant Reproduction.

Chapter 12: Passing Plant Characteristics to the Next Generation.

Part IV: The Wide, Wonderful World of Plants: Plant Biodiversity.

Chapter 13: Changing with the Times: Evolution and Adaptation.

Chapter 14: The Tree of Life: Showing the Relationships Between Living Things.

Chapter 15: Examining the Forest Floor: Bryophytes and Seedless Vascular Plants.

Chapter 16: Their Seeds Are Naked: Gymnosperms.

Chapter 17: Say It with Flowers: Angiosperms.

Part V: Plants and People.

Chapter 18: Making Connections with Plant Ecology.

Chapter 19: Altering Plants by Using Biotechnology.

Chapter 20: Thriving on Plants in Everyday Life.

Part VI: The Part of Tens.

Chapter 21: Ten Weirdest Plants.

Chapter 22: Ten Tips for Improving Your Grade in Botany.

Index.

Rene Fester Kratz, PhD is a Biology instructor at Everett Community College. As a member of the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership, she worked to develop science curricula that are in alignment with research on human learning.