Book description
This is a brand new, fully updated edition of the natural history
classic first published in the New Naturalist series in 1973 as The
Pollination of Flowers. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists. com
This is a brand new, fully updated edition of the natural history
classic first published in the New Naturalist series in 1973 as The
Pollination of Flowers.
The importance of insects in pollinating flowers is today so well known
it's easy to forget that it was discovered little more than two
centuries ago: before that, it was believed that the concern of bees
with flowers was simply a matter of collecting honey.
But the methods by which pollen reaches the female flower, enabling
fertilisation and seed production to take place, include some of the
most varied and fascinating mechanisms in the natural world. The Natural
History of Pollination describes all the ways in which pollination is
brought about: by wind, water, birds, bats and even mice and rats; but
principals by a great diversity of insects in an amazing range of ways,
some simple, some bizarre.
This book is a unique introduction to a complex yet easily accessible
subject of great fascination. '. . . combines scholarship with
lucidity, and brings innumerable fascinating details of the subject to
the enthusiastic amateur as wee as the professional botanist.'
The Times Educational Supplement
'This is a great book.'
New Scientist Michael Proctor is an Honorary Research Fellow (and
until his retirement in 1994 was Reader in Plant Ecology) at the
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Exeter. With wide
interests in ecology and plant biosystematics, his interest in insects
and pollination ecology dates from his student days, shared with Peter
Yeo at Cambridge. He has published many scientific papers on a variety
of ecological topics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
