Takhtajan, Armen; translated by C. Jeffrey — Flowering plants, origin and dispersal

Oliver & Boyd. 1st English edition. V.g.. V.g.. Armen Takhtajan was the director of the Dept. of Higher Plants at the Komarov Botanical Institute, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) and a distinguished palaeobotanist and plant systematist. This first English translation of the second edition of his popular "Poriskhozhdenie pokrytosemennykh rastenii" (The Origin of Angiospermous Plants), its dust jacket is "very sixties" in design. The translatoris a former researcher at Kew Gardens specialising in the Asteraceae. The core of the book is a hypothetical reconstruction of the first flowering plants, with supporting chapters on the Cretaceous Expansion and Insects and the Flowering Plants. The book also has a discussion of phytochoria (plant areas) and their development over geological time. Fig. 31 shows a dendrogram with the author's ideas of the "probable relationships of the order of flowering plants", which despite being superseded by recent discoveries based on DNA evidence has stood the test of time remarkably well. The book concludes with an appendix giving "an outline of the classification of flowering plants" (to family level), which has subsequently been further revised. D.j. slightly rubbed; top edge dusty.