Plant Systematics

by Michael G. Simpson

Plant Systematics, Third Edition, has made substantial contributions to plant systematics courses at the upper-undergraduate and first year graduate level, with the first edition winning The New York Botanical Garden's Henry Allan Gleason Award for outstanding recent publication in plant taxonomy, plant ecology or plant geography. This third edition continues to provide the basis for teaching an introduction to the morphology, evolution and classification of land plants. A foundation of the approach, methods, research goals, evidence and terminology of plant systematics are presented, along with the most recent knowledge of evolutionary relationships of plants and practical information vital to the field.
In this new edition, the author includes greatly expanded treatments on families of flowering plants, as well as tropical trees (all with full-color plates), and an updated explanation of maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference algorithms. Chapters on morphology and plant nomenclature have also been enhanced with new material.

- Covers research developments in plant molecular biology

- Features clear, detailed cladograms, drawings and photos

- Includes major revisions to chapters on phylogenetic systematics and plant morphology

Genres: Science, Plants, Nonfiction, Nature, Biology, Reference, Academic

1665 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Marianna Vasile]

A book that every botanist should have. I loved it as a student and I keep using very often!

[Sophie Wieland]

It's probably odd to review textbooks, but I just have to take a moment to extol the glossary of this behemoth of a book - lovely, concise, & understandable!

[Yanick Punter]

Too much details for me

[Jude Reiter]

This was a required textbook for the plant taxonomy class I took, and it is certainly highly informative and a great resource if you wish to get into learning about plants.

[Gwen Baird]

Regular degular textbook that shoves info down your throat

[Paige McLoughlin]

Botany is so complicated with so many varieties, so many subtle differences between families and species. Way harder than physics simply because physics has a fundamental simplicity, but botany has endless variety. My mind has a hard time wrapping around the multitude of plants out there. The book tries to tame the subject, but I will be reading this stuff over and over again until I get even a rudimentary grasp.

Update 4/5/2022 still understand only the basics, but it is worth trying to get better.

Reread 11/30/2025

I dip into this book from time to time. I feel I understand a little of the basics, but my plant identification skills need a lot of work. I am not good at noticing subtle morphological differences.