LITERATURE CITED

Hall JL, Hawes C. 1991. Electron microscopy of plant cells. London,San Diego, New York: Academic Press.

Rensing K. 2001. Chemical and cryo®xation for transmission electronmicroscopy of gymnosperm cambial cells. In: Cha�ey NJ, ed.2001. Wood formation in trees: cell and molecular biologytechniques. The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers (inpress).

Ruzin SE. 1999. Plant microtechnique and microscopy. New York,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nigel Cha�ey# 2001 Annals of Botany Company

doi:10.1006/anbo.2000.1343

Keddy PA. 2000. Wetland ecology: principles and conserva-tion. 614 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.£32.95 (softback).

Writing a book on wetland ecology is an ominous under-taking, not least because there is no universally acceptedde®nition of what actually constitutes a true `wetland'. As aresult, Paul Keddy dedicates some 30 pages of the ®rstchapter to an exhaustive review of the various de®nitionsavailable, and this may seem a little long-winded to the non-specialist. The book goes on to discuss some of the generalfactors that structure communities, such as disturbance andcompetition, as well as discussing factors that are morespeci®c to wetland ecology, such as hydrology and burial.

The ®nal section of the book draws on the earlier parts toinvestigate conservation and restoration of wetlands.Rather than reviewing previous studies case-by-case,Keddy attempts to provide the reader with a conceptualframework that might unite all restoration studies. Thesection includes some helpful recommendations on priority-setting for wetland conservation, which will prove veryuseful to managers of such habitats. I think this is one ofthe strongest parts of the book, although wetland managerswill probably wish to read it alongside more speci®c casestudies, such as those found in Hey & Philippi (1999).

Perhaps the most serious short-coming of this book isthat it misses out on a key point: wetland ecology is not justabout plants. While animals are considered as an importantstructuring force of wetland ¯ora, the book fails to integrateplant and animal ecology into a community-level synthesis.Where animals are mentioned, they are discussed super-®cially. For example, there is no mention of mosquitoecology, even though they are one of the most importantparts of many wetland ecosystems from both an ecologicaland human health viewpoint. As a consequence, the recentbook by Westlake et al. (1998) may prove more satisfactoryto those looking for a more complete community approachto the subject.

The 614 pages are interspersed with numerous ®gures andtables taken from approx. 1000 references. There are alsomany photographs, although the quality of reproduction isgenerally poor for a book of this style and price range.

Wetland ecology is not a book to wade through fromcover-to-cover. Rather, it will serve as a useful reference

work to dip into from time-to-time. The impressive amountof literature reviewed in this book will make it particularlyvaluable to academics with a speci®c interest in wetland¯ora.

LITERATURE CITED

Hey DL, Philippi NS. 1999. A case for wetland restoration. New York:Wiley.

Westlake DF, Kvet J, Szczepanski A, eds. 1998. The production ecologyof wetlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

David C. Aldridge# 2001 Annals of Botany Company

doi:10.1006/anbo.2001.1384

Malmfors B, Garnsworthy P, Grossman M. 2000. Writingand presenting scienti®c papers. 133 pp. Nottingham:Nottingham University Press. £15.00 (softback).

The aim of this book is to help scientists communicatethe results of their work to others, in a simple andunambiguous way. Arguably, a signi®cant number ofscientists do this part of their work least well. As theauthors rightly point out, it is no good doing researchworthy of winning a Nobel Prize if you are unable tocommunicate the results of that work to the rest of theworld. Unfortunately, writing is an art form and very fewpossess the innate ability to write well. The majority of usmust be taught this skill, although very few institutes ofhigher learning consider it their responsibility to do so. As aconsequence, many scientists drift into a jargon-®lled,verbose and often incomprehensible style of writing theyperceive as `professorial'. It might be argued that the use ofword-processors with `spell-checkers', `grammar-checkers',computer graphics and even voice activated writingprograms, ought to enable anyone to write a half-decentpaper. It is my observation that this is not the case; ifanything, the problem has become worse.

Towards remedying this problem, Writing and presentingscienti®c papers provides advice on the whole gamut ofcommunicating science, from how to write and publish ascienti®c paper, through to reviewing papers and presenta-tions. I should add that this last chapter was readassiduously by this reviewer! The book was stu�ed full ofuseful advice on improving style and how to avoid verbosityand some of the major grammatical pitfalls, into which weall tend to fall. Also, there were chapters on publishingscienti®c papers, oral and poster presentations, visualdisplays and training students in these arts.

The book was relatively easy to read, with clever use ofgraphics and illustrations. On the whole, it was well written,although the authors sometimes tended to stray intoinelegant phraseology, one could say `hoist by their ownpetard'. This criticism is purely subjective, however, and didnot detract from the well-presented and illustrated text,which drove the intended message well and truly home.(Or, is that sentence better written as `However, this

548 Book Reviews

criticism is purely subjective and did not . . . etc'. See what Imean!).

Although one could be mistaken for thinking that therewas a dearth of such work, this slim volume stands out as aclassic of its genre compared with other literature of asimilar nature. Not only is this book aimed at youngscientists presenting their ®rst results, or writing their PhDor MSc theses, but also to older members of the profession,wishing to improve their communication skills. In myopinion, it has the potential to do this very successfully;indeed, I would go further and recommend it as com-pulsory reading for all science undergraduates. Certainly, Ibelieve that every university and research establishmentwould bene®t from placing a copy in its library.

David Cooke# 2001 Annals of Botany Company

doi:10.1006/anbo.2000.1350

Nordenstam B, El-Ghazaly G, Kassas M, eds. 2000. Plantsystematics for the 21st century. 366 pp. London:Portland Press. £75 (hardback).

Plant systematics for the 21st century is a book containingthe proceedings of a symposium held at the Wenner-GrenCentre, Stockholm, in September 1998, with contributionsfrom the Vivi TaÈ ckholm 100th Birthday Symposium, Cairo,1998. There are 27 papers included in the proceedings,which are divided into six sections: Vivi TaÈ ckholmmemorial papers; Gunnar Erdtman memorial papers;Systematics today and tomorrow; Palynology and systema-tics; Aspects of Egyptian ¯ora; and Integration of data fromdi�erent ®elds of biology. There are ®ve memorial papers,11 papers on systematics ( from the third and ®nal sections),six papers on palynology and systematics, and four paperson the Egyptian ¯ora. The papers are preceded by a list ofcontributors, a list of abbreviations, and an introduction;and followed by a subject index and an index of taxa.

The Vivi TaÈ ckholm and Gunnar Erdtman memorialpapers provide inspirational accounts of the lives andachievements of two eminent Swedish scientists. At ®rstglance it may seem that too many pages are devoted to thememorial papers, but, conversely, they help to bring theproceedings into perspective.

The section `Systematics today and tomorrow' includespapers that capture the spirit of the book title, and there arenotable contributions from KaÈ llersjoÈ and Farris (Recentadvances in large-scale plant phylogenetic studies),Kubitzki (Plant systematics at the end of a century),Bremer (Phylogenetic nomenclature and the new ordinalsystem of the angiosperms) and Greuter (Botanicalnomenclature today and tomorrow). The titles of thesecontributions speak for themselves.

The papers in the section on `Palynology and systematics'give an overview of progress in the ®eld during mainly thesecond half of the twentieth century, concurrent withdevelopments in microscopy, and particularly the growth ofelectron microscopy. In the ®rst paper (New and improved

methods in palynology), El-Ghazaly gives examples oftechniques for the examination of pollen ultrastructureusing scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Inthe introductions to their respective papers, Blackmore andFerguson both describe the use of pollen characters intaxonomy by important early pioneers, e.g. Robert Brown,Fritzsche and Lindau. Blackmore reviews the methodologyof systematic palynology in a historical framework,illustrated by examples from the tribe Lactuceae(Asteraceae), and emphasizes the need for combiningpalynological, gross morphological and molecular datasets.Ferguson discusses some of the landmark papers that havein¯uenced the development of systematic pollen morph-ology, and the inter-relationships between structure,function and phylogeny. The genetic control of enzymescontrolling pollen development is given as an example of anarea for future research, which is relevant considering therecent interest and growth of studies in evolution anddevelopment (`evo-devo'). In the next paper, Chandadescribes di�erent aspects of Indian palynology, includingpollen analysis and sea-level change, and melissopalynology(pollen in honey). This is followed by Huysmans and co-authors, who provide an overview of the distribution andpossible function of orbicules (small sporopollenin bodiesproduced in the anther) in angiosperms. The ®nal paper inthis section, by Southworth, reviews sperm and generativecells in angiosperms as a source of potential characters forcladistic analysis, although at present comparative dataexist for relatively few taxa. All the above papers areconcerned with pollen of extant taxa, although Fergusonbrie¯y mentions fossil pollen. A review of the progress onthe fossil pollen record is a notable omission from thisbook, although this was perhaps beyond the scope of theconference.

The section `Integration of data from di�erent ®elds ofbiology' includes three papers focusing on the use ofspeci®c data sources in systematics. Jansen and Smetspresent an investigation into the morphology, distributionand systematic importance of vestures in the Gentianales.Nilson reports on the ®ndings of a survey of fragranceglands (osmophores) in the family Oleaceae, and BergstroÈ mreviews ¯oral odours and their biological and systematicsigni®cance. The ®nal two papers of this section coversystematics in a wide perspective. Iwatsuki presents adiscussion on the social impact of education in biodiversityand systematics in Japan, and Nordenstam and Ehrendor-fer report on a panel discussion on the future of systematicbotany. The latter of these contributions discusses thegoals, problems and opportunities for systematics in the21st century. Despite disagreement between variousmembers of the discussion panel, there is some consensusas to the goals of systematics for the next millennium, whichinclude the need to list and document the world'sbiodiversity, the use of phylogenetic methods to providepredictive classi®cations, and how systematists should playa more active role in raising political and public awarenessof biodiversity and conservation. Ehrendorfer provides auseful summary of the discussion, and consolidates some ofthe important points raised by the panel, but there is no

Book Reviews 549