Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany

A thin slice of celery stem, seen through a microscope, becomes a piece of fine lace: each mesh is a tiny chamber, and the plant is built from countless such cells.

In this practical introduction for high schools and elementary college courses, Douglas Houghton Campbell begins with a question larger than naming plants: what are they made of, and how are they related? He guides readers from the distinction between living and nonliving matter to the study of plant form, classification, and function, with knives, lenses, and microscopes as tools of discovery. Then a living spiderwort hair reveals a cell in startling detail—a clear wall, purple fluid, and a nucleus within. What hidden structures will the microscope uncover in the plants all around us?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.