Author(s): John Dawson

Environment

The Nature of Plants takes the reader on a tour of plant habitats from the seashore up into the mountains and from the tropics to the poles. Plants may live in places that provide too little rainfall, yet they thrive, either by evading drought, like the animals that live in deserts, or by tolerating the scarcity. Plants have adapted to living with too much water, dispersing their fruits and seeds without having floods and tides carry them away into the sea. There are plants that must live with fire, and others that grow in areas of deadening cold. Plants flourish on salty or toxic soils, some even concentrating the lethal substances in their tissues. There are plants that use other plants, climbing on them, strangling some, living in their leafy canopies, or parasitising them. And The Nature of Plants explores the love-hate relationship that plants have with animals, some feeding on plants but others drawn into serving plants by pollinating them, scattering their fruits and seeds, or being eaten themselves. The mostly hidden associations that plants have with bacteria and fungi are also revealed.