New book “Temperate herbs: an architectural analysis“

Publishing house Academia released book “ Temperate herbs: an architectural analysis“ by Jitka Klimešová who is focusing her research at the Institute of Botany on functional morphology of plants. Rhizomes, tubers, bulbs and roots of herbaceous plants are overlooked not only due to their position in the soil but also because they are wrongly considered unimportant. This book focuses on these belowground organs as they are responsible for key ecological functions of temperate herbs, like overwintering, clonal multiplication and resprouting after disturbance.

These functions are connected with plant architecture and the book presents a synthesis of previous attempts to classify basic plant architectural models. The belowground plant organs of temperate herbs are documented in more than 1000 drawings made during two decades of study of belowground organs of Central European plants.