Toxic Plants of North America, Second Edition is an up-to-date, comprehensive reference for both wild and cultivated toxic plants on the North American continent. In addition to compiling and presenting information about the toxicology and classification of these plants published in the years since the appearance of the first edition, this edition significantly expands coverage of human and wildlife—both free-roaming and captive—intoxications and the roles of secondary compounds and fungal endophytes in plant intoxications. More than 2,700 new literature citations document identification of previously unknown toxicants, mechanisms of intoxication, additional reports of intoxication problems, and significant changes in the classification of plant families and genera and associated changes in plant nomenclature. Toxic Plants of North America, Second Edition is a comprehensive, essential resource for veterinarians, toxicologists, agricultural extension agents, animal scientists, and poison control professionals.

This volume - the first of this series dealing with angiosperms - comprises the treatments of 73 families, representing three major blocks of the dicotyledons: magnoliids, centrosperms, and hamamelids. These blocks are generally recognized as subclasses in modern textbooks and works of reference. We consider them a convenient means for structuring the hundreds of di cotyledon families, but are far from taking them at face value for biological, let alone mono phyletic entities. Angiosperm taxa above the rank of family are little consolidated, as is easily seen when comparing various modern classifications. Genera and families, in contrast, are comparatively stable units -and they are important in practical terms. The genus is the taxon most frequently recognized as a distinct entity even by the layman, and generic names provide the key to all in formation available about plants. The family is, as a rule, homogeneous enough to conve niently summarize biological information, yet comprehensive enough to avoid excessive re dundance. The emphasis in this series is, therefore, primarily on families and genera.

Seeds are a vital part of life on earth. They are fundamental for plant reproduction, and many seeds play an important role in the diet of man and domestic and wild animals. Knowledge of the appearance of seeds - seed morphology - is of great importance to botany and seed identification in relation to: seed setting, quarantine work, forensic work, seed poisening, studies of seed dispersal, seed banks and archaeological studies.;This bibliography contains 3775 references and is divided in two parts: handbooks, and articles and monographs. In the latter the bibliographical reference is supplemented by information of importance to seed identificaiton: genera mentioned in articles, keys, descriptions, drawings, photograph, scanning electron micrographs, anatomy and chemical methods. The index of authors contains the names of an extensive number of authors, cited in the bibliography, and in the index of genera more than 3900 genera, described in one or more of the publications are cited.

Vol.1 includes a list of flowering plant families (p.299-316) and a concordance of family names accepted by Cronquist, Takhtajan, and Thorne. Vol.2+ include distribution maps for each species.