Although the book contains brief sections on taxonomy and culture its main purpose is the photographs and descriptions of hundreds and hundreds of maples. Most of the photographs are high quality "close ups". If you were looking for an Acer from an architectural standpoint, the book would be of little use. Each photo contains a brief but informative botanical description giving the taxonomic section for the species, a description of the tree size, flowers, and fruits. The species list is exhaustive. Yet, the strength of the book is the amazing compilation of photographs of the mutations and natural variations that are presently cultivated. A large section of Acer palmatum mutations is presented but the strength of the book is its broad scope. For an American, the `down side' to this text is that almost all of the photographs are of European origin and many if not most of the cultivars are unobtainable in the United States. Many of the more unusual maples listed here are prone to reversion, require grafting onto rootstocks, or are not adaptable to most US climates. However, if you are a rare plant enthusiast, I suggest you buy the book just for the challenge. For example, the book contains an excellent photo of a great red bark mutation (`Erythrocladum') of our native green bark moosewood (Acer pensylvanicum). The tree was isolated in 1904 in Germany but is difficult to propagate. So impressed was I, that after a lengthy search, I was able to locate a US source. The warning here is that the cost of this book is minimal when compared to the price you may pay for a maple discovered in this book.
The book contains other very nice features. A rather lengthy list of European and American gardens where maples are featured will make it easy for a frequent traveler to visit some of these interesting trees. In addition, the appendix contains a section called "Maples for Particular Purposes" which would assist a gardener in making the right selection. A great glossary, a wonderful index, and European and US plant hardiness zone maps complete the book. This is a fine example of a reference book. Throw away your "coffee table" horticultural books to make room for this gem. If you love maples (and who doesn't) this book is a treasure and a must book for the rare tree collector. It should be on the shelf of every arboretum. — Michael Marcotrigiano, Dept of Plant and Soil Sciences, Univ of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA
During the rise of Hitler and Naziism in 1933, Alfred Mayer's parental family fled from Germany to Holland, leaving all of their possessions behind. Then as the German threat increased, the family fled again from Holland to England in 1940. But they arrived in England only in time to witness the Battle of London. After the war, Alfred attended University College, London, earning the PhD in 1949. He then moved to Israel in 1950, living through the various Israeli wars. These were troubled times.
One principal message I get from the book is the profound effect of strong mentors on the development of a scientist. Mayer's admiration for Botany Professor W.H. Pearsall at University College was of major importance to his development. This man's strength and patience brought Mayer through difficult times and strongly molded his scientific outlook. After moving to Israel, a somewhat parallel but more contentious interaction was had with Professor Michael Evanari. Each of these two mentors molded the scientific foci that lasted for the rest of Mayer's professional life - i.e. an enduring enthusiasm for the physiology of plants.
As Alfred takes the reader through the 50 years of his professional life, he records a litany of findings about being a professional plant biologist. These have pervasive relevance to our profession, and deserve recounting here. As a short-cut, I will use a numerical listing of some major findings in Mayer's experience.
1. He speaks of struggling with the need to exercise objectivity in research. This is a struggle we all contend with. Such objectivity is often somewhat bent when we tend subjectively to describe our progress as though it were done in a straight-line logical manner, when it really involved a scattering array of probes in various directions.
2. He speaks often about appraising the importance of our own work. Collectively, his comments seem to me to say that it may be a nice happenstance when our research results are of importance to scientists in other specialties, or to people generally, but that the central importance was our own commitment to the work and our own sense of reward that comes from doing it.
3. For Alfred, the involvement with teaching was a keen source of fresh ideas as well as a sense of stimulus in his science, and finally as a reward in terms of the influence he himself perceives he had on his students. Most of us can resonate with his feeling that teaching is a truly important component of one's intellectual growth.
4. As he gained in stature, his invitations to other universities brought new vistas as well as new opportunities to his mind. I find it notable that he shows less enthusiasm for large national or international meetings with their multiple simultaneous sessions than he found in small meetings or personal interactions. I interpret his repeating enthusiasms for his professional visits, as defining the importance of personal interactions with colleagues. Personal visits to other laboratories was an order of magnitude more beneficial than the more impersonal interactions at science meetings.
5. His attitudes toward university administration were complex. He seemed to adapt well to a modest level of administrative duties, but then he became downright frustrated by the hassle of administering large academic units and making long-term plans. I can resonate with his sense of disappointment with administrative duties.
The last parts of the book dwell particularly on his personal life, and his devotion to his wife, Nitza. Altogether by combining the story of his personal dedication with the story of his professional growth, he gives the book a strong sense of the reality of Alfred Mayer as a person.
Alfred Mayer has clearly led an interesting and productive life as a person sold on plants. His principal message is that there is a great deal of satisfaction in doing and directing research. He recognizes the brief longevity of credit that a scientist gets for having done the work, but this brevity does not erase the sense that it has been fun. This is an interesting analysis of the life of a distinguished scientist. —A Carl Leopold, Boyce Thompson Institute of Plant Research, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
ISBN 0-19-511342-X (cloth US$95.00) 350 pp.
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4314.
The vegetation of North America comprises 17,000-20,000 species of vascular
plants or about 7% of the world¹s flora. The author embarks
in this book in a cross-disciplinary exercise describing the environmental
and biotic changes occurring in the last 70 million years (late Cretaceous
Period/ Cenozoic Era) to the North American Flora. The region under
consideration here is north of Mexico including the United States and Canada.
Sixty-five Ma ago the Rocky Mountains were only ~1km above sea level; the Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains would not attain substantial heights until late in the Tertiary. The North Atlantic connection had only begun to fragment in the Maastrichtian (69-66 Ma). An entire new flora started to develop in the early Cenozoic as an asteroid collided with the earth, leaving in its wake the Chicxulub crater now buried under the Yucatan Peninsula. About 44% of the genera and 70% of the species comprising the marine plankton, large terrestrial animals (dinosaurs) became extinct at this time. This asteroid had such an impact, we had to create a major break in the geological time line coined the K-T boundary. The description of vegetation for such an extensive area involves the recognition and characterization of units called formations, which are named with reference to composition, habit, distribution, and climate. The author recognizes and describes seven plant formations in this book (tundra, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, grassland, shrubland/ chaparral-woodland-savanna, desert, and tropical.
In the first chapters of the book the author lays the goal of the survey by cataloguing the current modern vegetation found in the area studied. The next chapter is indeed devoted to what drives the arrangement of vegetation on a landscape such as plate tectonics, climate, terranes. I wish the author would have spent more time describing the diagrams outlining the feedback relationships of a particular external upon the vegetation. Paleotemperature and sea level changes are emphasized in the next chapter in terms of the proxies and the methodologies used. The Geoflora concept fundamental to paleobotany is outlined. Chaney (UCB) defined it as "a group of plants which has maintained itself with only minor changes in composition for several epochs or periods of earth history, during which time its distribution has been profoundly altered". An interesting chapter follows where methods of paleovegetation analysis are outlined. The author critically divides these methods in two categories. Those that use plant microfossils for reconstructing terrestrial vegetation and those that use plant megafossils. This critical overview is very well detailed. Scanning electron micrographs are presented illustrating the diversity in pollen morphology. It might have helped in this methodology section to present radiometric dating crucial to paleoenvironmental studies. In the next chapters the record of North American vegetation is discussed in detail. The author outlines four stages emerging from three major climatic changes producing effects evident in the plant record. Prominent among those are global decreases in temperature and associated extinction diversification- migration events in the biotic realm. This provide a convenient framework in the development of the North American vegetation: Late Cretaceous and Early Eocene, Middle Eocene and the Early Miocene, the Middle Miocene and the Pliocene and the quaternary. The author obviously chose the geologic time scale to describe events in Earth history. Another important context is faunal history, which reflects prevailing vegetation types and general environmental conditions. The last chapter traces the origin of current biogeographic relationships of the North American flora, primarily with the Mediterranean region, the dry regions of South America, eastern Asia, and eastern Mexico.
I strongly recommend this text to readers having a strong background
in the biological and geological sciences. For the specialist, species
list are provided for the major fossil floras and a list of technical papers
is included after each chapter. For the general reader, terms are
defined, specialized units of measurements are explained, and widely used
common names for familiar plants are given as they are encountered in the
text. At the end of each chapter a supplemental bibliography of General
Readings is also provided. These include relevant articles in American
Scientist, Natural History, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine,
and other sources, as well as reviews in BioScience, Nature, and
Science. Terms of nomenclature are explained at the end of
the Prologue and are repeated the first time the symbols are used.
A thorough index is provided at the end of the text.—Laurent M. Meillier,
U.C. Santa Barbara, Department of Geological Sciences, Santa Barbara, CA.
USA.
