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Bazzaz, Fakhri A., and John Grace, editors. 1997. Plant resource allocation. Physiological Ecology Series. Academic Press, San Diego, California. xi + 303 p. $84.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-12-083490-1 (acid-free paper).
This slender volume is the 33rd in a series, "Physiological Ecology," that dates back to 1971 and includes no fewer than five volumes dealing at least partly with resource allocation in plants. This book contains 12 chapters contributed by an outstanding group of researchers drawn from North America and Europe; it evidently originated as a meeting or symposium. Bazzaz leads off the volume with a very nice compilation of some of the major issues in plant biology that relate to resource allocation patterns, and establishes the tone, direction, and biases of the rest of the volume. These include the assumption that carbon is a (the?) central currency of interest in allocation to tissues and functions, that patterns of carbon acquisition and use may be "controlled" by nitrogen availability, and that plants are "homeostatic" with respect to carbon-mineral balance, tending towards some sort of balanced ratios of these elements. This introductory chapter draws together explicitly the conclusions of the other chapters and even proposes mechanisms by which the phenomena described by the chapter authors may be integrated physiologically by the plant. This is unusual in an edited volume; I wish it were emulated by more editors.
The other chapters are generally of high quality, either in terms of ideas or findings, but vary a...