By David H. Benzing

This ebook offers a synthesis of the huge info to be had at the biology of Bromeliacea, a principally neotropical relations of approximately 2700 defined species. the writer emphasizes reproductive and vegetative constitution, similar body structure, ecology, and evolution, instead of floristics and taxonomy. Guiding questions comprise: Why is that this kinfolk inordinately winning in arboreal (epiphytic) and different regularly tense habitats and why is that this relations so vital to large fauna past pollinators and frugivores within the woodland cover? impressive and infrequently novel mechanisms that mediate water stability, tolerance for top and occasional exposures, and mutualisms with ants have bought a lot examine and make allowance attention-grabbing comparisons between plant taxa and aid clarify why participants of this taxon convey extra adaptive and ecological type than such a lot different households of flowering vegetation. This quantity concentrates on functionality and underlying mechanisms, hence it is going to around out a literature that in a different way more often than not ignores easy biology in desire of taxonomy and horticulture.