Classification Of Flowering Plants

This second volume of renowned English botanist Alfred Barton Rendle's The Classification of Flowering Plants was published in 1925.

This book provides a short version of the general classification of flowering plants, together with an exposition of the theory underlying the system.

Armen Takhtajan is among the greatest authorities in the world on the evolution of plants. This book culminates almost sixty years of the scientist's research of the origin and classification of the flowering plants. It presents a continuation of Dr. Takhtajan’s earlier publications including “Systema Magnoliophytorum” (1987), (in Russian), and “Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants” (1997), (in English). In his latest book, the author presents a concise and significantly revised system of plant classification (‘Takhtajan system’) based on the most recent studies in plant morphology, embryology, phytochemistry, cytology, molecular biology and palynology. Flowering plants are divided into two classes: class Magnoliopsida (or Dicotyledons) includes 8 subclasses, 126 orders, c. 440 families, almost 10,500 genera, and no less than 195,000 species; and class Liliopsida (or Monocotyledons) includes 4 subclasses, 31 orders, 120 families, more than 3,000 genera, and about 65,000 species.This book contains a detailed description of plant orders, and descriptive keys to plant families providing characteristic features of the families and their differences.

-- Natural History

The original suggestion to organize a symposium about the classi fication and evolution of the Flowering Plants was made at, the International Botanical Congress at Leningrad in 1975, and the idea was so well accepted by several colleagues that plans for such a symposium quickly took shape. An organizing committee consisting of Professor H. MERXMULLER, Miinchen, Professor V. H. HEYWOOD, Reading, and Professor K. KUBITZKI, Hamburg, was set up. The conference took place on 7-12 September 197tl in the Institut fiir Allgemeine Botanik of the University of Hamburg under the auspices of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and was at tended by 80 participants from 14 countries. There have been several meetings in recent years which have dealt with the origin and evolution of the Flowering Plants so that it might be questioned whether yet another symposium dealing with more or less the same subject were really "justified. As the reader will see from the contents of the book, this symposium differed from similar ones held recently in two respects: 1. Emphasis was given to methodological aspects of the classification of higher taxa, and 2. much classificatory and evolutionary evidence relating to the higher taxa of Flowering Plants was presented.