Links With the Past in the Plant World

A botanist surveys how living plants connect to their ancient relatives, combining discussion of longevity and geographic distribution with an overview of the geological record and the processes that preserve plants as fossils. The work explains how tree rings and rock strata inform estimates of age, outlines fossilization mechanisms, and traces the antiquity and distribution of major plant groups through case studies of ferns, the great Californian trees, the Araucaria family, and the maiden-hair tree. Emphasis rests on interpreting paleobotanical evidence to reveal continuity and change in plant lineages and to encourage further study of the deep-time origins of modern flora.