watering cans
seedlings of barro colorado island and the neotropics
p published in association with the natural history museum london p few field guides exist to the plants of the american tropics . guides to the juvenile stages of plants are rare for any part of the world . a guide to identification of tropical seedlings from trees to herbs is something to be treasured . nancy garwoods lifelong devotion to the study of the ecology and taxonomy of seedlings combined with margaret tebbss superb illustrations has given us this first comprehensive guide to juvenile plants in the american tropics . from the foreword by robin b. foster p seedlings are the future of forest communities . knowledge of seedling ecology is essential for understanding the local abundance distribution and dynamics of individual species and plant populations for deciphering the mechanisms responsible for the high species diversity in tropical forests and for developing sound management and conservation plans for tropical forests . p in this monumental work of botany nancy c. garwood provides the first comprehensive guide to seedlings in the american tropics using barro colorado island in panama as an emblematic locale . more than two decades in the making this guide is the essential work on the neotropical seedlings . the review of neotropical seedlings from 229 plant families is the heart of the book . descriptions summarize information from 1243 genera gleaned from accounts of nearly 3000 species . families of all major neotropical woody plants are covered as well as those that are mostly herbs aquatic species parasites and saprophytes . p this is the largest compendium of information on tropical seedlings published to date . this guide to the seedling flora of barro colorado island includes illustrations of and keys to 775 species of forest trees shrubs lianas vines herbs epiphytes hemi epiphytes and weedy plants typical of forest margins and clearings . all genera and 75 percent of the species covered occur broadly across the neotropics and provide numerous illustrated examples for the family accounts . key characters needed to identify dicot and monocot seedlings are also described and illustrated supplemented with an illustrated glossary of descriptive terms . p paired with superb and intricate illustrations by margaret tebbs arranged in 255 plates garwoods work enables tropical ecologists botanists and systematists to identify neotropical seedlings that have not yet developed the diagnostic characteristics of the parent plants .