Botany for Gardeners, 3rd Edition

Great book for anyone interested in Botany & plant Sciences you will not be disappointed well written !! Worth every dollar.

To begin, I should mention I have a B.S. in Biology, and also have a natural curiosity about the workings of the natural world (meaning I not only have gotten the education, but care enough to have absorbed the knowledge I was privy to). Simply put, the information provided in this book is in-depth enough to give you a fundamental understanding of how plants work on the cellular level. For gardeners this is extremely useful. Instead of knowing anecdotally that cutting off the apical meristem promotes lateral shoot growth you'll know the chemical mechanism behind it. You can then take that fundamental knowledge and apply it. For example, the same chemical messenger thats responsible for the growth response just mentioned also regulates root growth. In fact, the root growth hormones you feed cutting is an artificial replica of the growth hormone (auxin) that is responsible for shoot growth. You can then get even more in-depth as you investigate how auxin navigates its way through the plant by means of xylem and phloem (just phloem for this particular molecule).The point is that this book is not only practically useful, but, for me, exciting because you learn the highly complex biological processes that are going on under the surface (so to speak) for every seemingly stoic plant outside your window.Side note: the book also has a large number of very high quality pictures that make understanding and remembering the info quite easy.I highly recommend this book to any gardener

This journal sized book is packed with scientific information, but is presented to the layman gardener in easy to read form, with excellent line drawings, color photos and some lists and tables. I was surprised by the list of poisonous plants and which parts are toxic; there were more than I was aware of. Anatomy and processes are pictured and discussed. This is great for the gardener who wants to know more than digging a hole and dropping in a seed, bulb, tuber or plant.

What I like about this book is that, as a beginner in botany myself, it opened my eyes to better take care of plants in the garden. It's easy to read and things just tend to click the more you learn. Some of the jargon is hard to remember but the photos help understand what Capon is trying to illustrate; but sometimes he doesn't include figures which is frustrating. But after reading this book, I can now make inference on how to pollinate a flower myself, plant a seed the right way and how to cut into a tree without giving it too much trouble to heal. This book is not only for horticulture beginners but also for biology majors who are interested in plants.

This primer on basic botany is fabulous. It has run-of-the-mill gardeners (not students/professionals) in mind and doesn't waste its time on technicalities that don't really matter to them (though it does make fleeting mention of certain ones like leaf shapes, etc.). This is a great way of advising readers that you don't have to overanalyze plants to appreciate their beauty and fruitfulness (pun intended). And it candidly admits scientific description is prosaic and unemotional, which i very true. While it does have a bibliography to explore further (for which the internet serves the same purpose), that's totally up to you.As for what it does have, it has plenty of beautiful pictures (both macroscopic and microscopic) and clear, crisp and concise explanations of the plant world. You can learn a lot from this short volume. One I was content with its contents, I passed it on to my aunt as an Xmas gift.It's a very satisfying book in itself. It make botany simple for the masses, and won't disappoint, unless your life is all about botany

I had a horticulture 15 class and this is the book we needed to get for class. I read most of it and got an A in the class. It’s very informative and good to keep for reference. If you want to learn about trees plants and shrubs more get this book it’ll let you understand how the inside of plants work like how xylem and phloem are the way plants get water to the plant and minerals are moved around to the plant parts by flowing in the phloem made during photo synthesis. You can learn more about the tissues of plants and their purpose. Very informative book great pictures that they use as examples. Would recommend to any other horticulture or hobbyists who want to know more about plant basics.

This is a very well written and organized book. I love the knowledge refresh and enjoy the flow of the book.If you are a serious gardener this book is a great read! Stop relying on YouTubers who have no idea what they are talking about and learn from true experts.

Whoah! I'm one of those people who is a hands-on learner, so to read directions about how to do somethingalways kinda snags me, but this book did a wonderful job on helping by its thorough classificationof plants and their characteristics. I've been a hard-core hobby gardener for 7 years, and I thought I knewplenty about identifying both food and herbal plants. This book proved I still have much to learn. I'm studying formy Master Herbalist Certification, and although the school has a few books about botany we must complete to graduate,I decided to add this one to get a more in depth understanding of plants and identifying them. Especially knowingwe are to be thoroughly tested on similar looking plants whereby the "twin" is actually poisonous, like Hemlock.Thank you Brian. I personally love to be able to go to different areas and States and identify plants and trees.

Well written book with lots of illustrations. Easy to understand yet detailed enough for anyone wishing to learn how plants work and why they work.

This book provides a clear overview about plants and I found it useful. Recommend anyone serious about farming as this book tells about why a plant needs to be treated at a particular way.

While perfection is a word I seldom use, I've still decided to give this book a maximum rating of five stars because in comparison with others of its kind it is far superior. If it's the kind of thing you want, then this book is the best you'll find.With a budding interest in plants (pardon the pun), one is often caught in the gulf between plant encyclopaedias, gardening books and university textbooks - with little or no general botany books in between. There seems to be nothing out there explaining how plants work, how they do what they do or how they've come to be what they are without first requiring a degree in biology prior to reading. However, this book does it!I found the title misleading. It seems to suggest it is yet another horticultural gardening book discussing matters of pruning and depths of which to plant bulbs, but actually it's a far more scientific yet approachable book than that.Capon has managed to write the only book I am as of yet to find that successfully communicates the general basis of botany to anybody who has the desire to care.

Hugely useful for a haphazard gardener who studied botany last in 3rd class at primary school. It gives you the ability to make decisions based on an increased understanding of how plants work, instead of just trying to follow instructions or folklore.

Smaller size book is great for easier referencing. The book itself is a great source of information, and easy to comprehend.