Plants

The purpose of this square-format, large-page, paperback “coffee-table” book is to reveal “the evolution of pollen and seeds, two of the most crucial innovations in the history of all life on our planet” (p. 7). The cover indicates that the images inside are enlargements of very small botanical objects: spores, pollen grains, flowers, fruits, and seeds. The images filling the book are mostly colorized SEMs (scanning electron micrographs) of small botanical specimens. Other images are extreme close-ups of flowers or fruits. The beautiful and colorful images float on black pages, which intensifies their visual impact. Between the images, the text tells the story of botany in pastel type. The font is small, but the informational content is dense, providing the reader with a good explanation of the natural history of spore- and seed-bearing plants. The vocabulary used is fully professional and not euphemized, except as is common in science books....