This book should be subtitled a physical scientist looks at trees. Vogel is a biologist but this book takes a look at leaves and trees from a physical science (think physics and chemistry) viewpoint. I confess I love the beauty of newtonian physics and therefore this was right up my alley.
Vogel discusses everything from leaves collecting sun, gas difussion and circulation, gathering carbon dioxide, using huge quantities of water, keeping from overheating, staying clean, avoiding freeze damage, and leave deployment. Add a chapter on trees standing up and surviving storms and he's got it covered. There is very little bio-chemistry (like photosynthesis formulas) but he covers diffusion, fluid flow, beam strength, heat flow, surface tension, and several other topics in pretty good detail. It's not light read but you don't need to deal with a lot of formulas unless you dive into the footnotes. All the formulas are there.
So why are leaves leaf shaped and what physical factors influence their form? How do they get water all the way up to the leaves and what properties of water allow for these processes? how does wind effect trees, from their leave shapes, to the entire tree? How are trees "engineered" to withstand storms? If you want a description of the answer to these questions this is your book. But be prepared to deal with laminar and turbulent fluid flows, coefficients of drag, viscosity, rates of flow and diffusion given various conditions.
This is a different perspective on leaves and trees but is fairly technical. I would advise you to avoid it unless you have a basic understanding off physical chemistry and physics and want to learn more. For me it was pretty neat, informative and thought provoking but I only gave it 3 stars because many others would probably find it technical gobbledygook.
Vogel discusses everything from leaves collecting sun, gas difussion and circulation, gathering carbon dioxide, using huge quantities of water, keeping from overheating, staying clean, avoiding freeze damage, and leave deployment. Add a chapter on trees standing up and surviving storms and he's got it covered. There is very little bio-chemistry (like photosynthesis formulas) but he covers diffusion, fluid flow, beam strength, heat flow, surface tension, and several other topics in pretty good detail. It's not light read but you don't need to deal with a lot of formulas unless you dive into the footnotes. All the formulas are there.
So why are leaves leaf shaped and what physical factors influence their form? How do they get water all the way up to the leaves and what properties of water allow for these processes? how does wind effect trees, from their leave shapes, to the entire tree? How are trees "engineered" to withstand storms? If you want a description of the answer to these questions this is your book. But be prepared to deal with laminar and turbulent fluid flows, coefficients of drag, viscosity, rates of flow and diffusion given various conditions.
This is a different perspective on leaves and trees but is fairly technical. I would advise you to avoid it unless you have a basic understanding off physical chemistry and physics and want to learn more. For me it was pretty neat, informative and thought provoking but I only gave it 3 stars because many others would probably find it technical gobbledygook.