It’s pretty obvious, from the endpapers to the chapter headings, that the makers of this book know a thing or two about visual design. Everything about this book is visually appealing – the fonts, the colours, the layout – hell, even a cross-section of a breadfruit made Mad Martha want to pull out her crochet hooks and start recreating it in yarn. The book has the kind of illustrations that you want to tear out (carefully), frame and put on your wall. It’s the perfect size to lay out flat on a table or on the floor, so all of your friends can gather round and point enthusiastically at that bit of information that will move your quest forward. Seriously, the size and format of the book just screams “Enticing information contained within!”

What Audubon did with his fabulous illustrations of the birds of the world, this book does for plants. This is a marvelous coffee table book and one that you will be proud to display. Great for home and all libraries - schools and public. This title makes a sizable claim to operate as a museum of world plants, and it delivers in a big way…The text is accessible to 3rd grade classrooms (pictures will impress those even younger), yet will still offer interest to secondary grades for botany class or browsing.

Success!

As in companion volume Animalium by Jenny Broom and also illustrated by Scott (2014), the digitally colored images are not drawn to scale but are rendered with as much attention to visual impact as to exact, formal anatomical detail…a big, decorative, eye-filling survey.

Let’s be honest: even if you know nothing about plants and have no interest in learning about plants, if you pop this one on your coffee table, guests you wish to impress are going to be fooled into thinking you’re a botanical genius. Or at least a botanical enthusiast. Even if you accept the theory of evolution (see Evolution: Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton for a great intro into some of the issues with the theory) the amount of guesswork presented as fact is concerning. Even more so when this could have been a very compelling book that served as a lovely springboard into a love of botany.Elegantly encapsulating these dizzyingly diverse and ubiquitous wonders, Scott’s photographic illustrations, too, offer astronomical appeal. Complete with an index and sources for suggested reading, this dazzling display is ideal for classroom and coffee-table collections, budding botanists and curious kids, and everywhere—and everyone—in between. Containing everything from perennials to bulbs to tropical exotica, this wonderful feast of botanical knowledge is complete with superb cross sections to show how plants work. Believe me, прочитати перше видання підручника Морозюк (з усіма респектами до “першого вітчизняного шкільного підручника з ботаніки”) з його переускладеною лексикою та манерою викладу, ніби то для дуже замотивованих студентів, а не для школярів, за два дні – це нефігова психологічна травма. Ні, в “Ботанікумі” теж розповідають про вайї з архегоніями, але роблять це повільно, охайно та старанно повторюючи “людськими словами”. Професорка Кесі Вілліс – завідувачка науково-дослідницького управління в К’ю – свою частину справи зробила круто. Статті тут поділяються на дві частини: перша – дуже загальний вступ до теми, друга – уточнення специфіки, що йдуть “додатком” до ілюстрації. І от складні технічні моменти та більшість специфічних термінів ідуть якраз в тих “додатках”, а їх можна читати, а можна і нє. Можна й взагалі не читати, а картинки роздивлятися, вони ще крутіші. Ото в блозі якраз показую.