Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1: An overview -- What is a tree? -- A short history of trees -- Living fossils -- The value of trees -- Parts of the tree -- Chapter 2: Leaves: the food producers -- The make-up of a leaf -- Inside the leaf -- Sun and shade leaves -- Water loss by leaves -- Control of water loss -- Taking things in through the leaf -- Leaf movements -- Leaf shape -- Needles and scales -- Phyllodes, phylloclades and no leaves at all -- Other modifications: stipules, tendrils and climbing leaves -- Juvenile leaves -- Evergreen versus deciduous -- Death and senescence -- Leaf colours -- Why have compound leaves? -- Further reading -- Chapter 3: Trunk and branches: more than a connecting drainpipe -- The woody skeleton -- How the trunk grows -- Do all trees get wider? -- What is wood made of? Wood structure -- Conifers -- Hardwoods -- Exceptional wood structure -- Growth rings -- Variation in ring width -- How water gets up a tree -- Root pressure -- Pulling water up trees: the tension-cohesion theory -- Air in the system -- Hydraulic architecture -- Hydraulic network -- Grain -- Wood movement -- Rays -- Sapwood and heartwood -- Bark -- Inner bark (phloem) -- Outer bark -- How does bark cope with the expanding tree? -- Bark thickness and bark shedding -- Burs, buds and coppicing -- Branching and knots -- Reaction wood -- Further reading -- Chapter 4: Roots: the hidden tree -- The root plate -- Deeper roots -- Beyond the root plate -- How far do roots spread? -- ...and how much damage can roots do? -- Fine roots -- Fine roots and tree health -- Root loss and death -- How much soil is needed? -- Is the water table needed? -- Increasing water and nutrient uptake -- Canopy roots -- Root hairs -- Mycorrhizas -- Other aids to nutrition -- Root grafting -- Food storage.

Development and growth of roots -- Root elongation: primary growth -- Root thickening: secondary growth -- Speed of growth -- Control of growth -- Longevity of roots -- Roots in wet soils -- Buttresses, pillars and stranglers -- Buttresses -- Pillar roots -- Strangling flgs -- Further reading -- Chapter 5: Towards the next generation: flowers, fruits and seeds -- Animal pollination -- Treating your guests right -- Wind pollination -- Modifying the flower for wind -- Sending pollen by air -- Blurring between animal and wind pollination -- The problem of being large -- Self- and cross-pollination -- Self-incompatibility -- Producing the sexes at different times -- Male and female parts in separate flowers on the same tree: monoecy -- Why be dioecious? -- Trees that swap sex -- The cost of sex -- Seeds without pollen: apomixis but not parthenocarpy -- From flower to fruit -- Types of tree fruit -- What does the fruit do? -- Mast years -- Dispersing the seeds -- Wind dispersal -- Animal dispersal -- Dispersal by water -- The cost of reproduction -- Why grow more flowers than are needed? -- The next generation -- Further reading -- Chapter 6: The growing tree -- Speed of growth -- Height -- Width -- Champion trees in size -- What limits the size of a tree? -- What controls tree growth? -- Internal control -- Balancing the roots and shoots -- External factors -- Growth in the real world -- Growth rings and dendrochronology -- Buds and tree growth -- Buds -- The new shoot -- Value of these strategies -- Phenology: timing and pattern of annual growth -- Tinkering with phenology -- Lifetime changes in growth -- The start of reproduction -- Further reading -- Chapter 7: The shape of trees -- Trees of distinctive shape -- Why have these distinctive shapes? -- The dynamic tree: reacting to the changing world -- Biomechanics and gravity.

Buds, branches and tree shape -- A twig and its leaves -- A hopeless tangle -- Dealing with too many buds -- Shedding branches -- Length of branches -- Flowering -- How does the tree control shape? -- Changes with age -- How are all the leaves exposed to light? -- Human influence -- Further reading -- Chapter 8: The next generation: new trees from old -- The Seed -- Seed dormancy -- Soil seed bank -- Other seeding strategies -- Fire and storage on the tree: serotiny -- Seed size -- Germination -- The significance of seed size -- The odds against success -- New trees without seed: vegetative propagation -- Producing new types of tree -- Further reading -- Chapter 9: Health, damage and death: living in a hostile world -- Defences -- First-line defences: stopping damage -- Physical defences: spines, thorns and prickles -- Other physical defences -- Ants and other beasties -- Chemical defences -- The evolutionary battle -- Defending the woody skeleton -- Keeping things out: resins, gums and latex -- Callus growth -- Healing wounds -- Internal defences -- Fungal rot -- Defence of wood: sapwood and heartwood -- Compartmentalisation of decay -- Damage from the environment -- Harsh conditions and pollution -- Cold -- Heat and fire -- Wind -- Trees still fail: why? -- Hollow trees -- Windthrow: uprooting trees -- Does wind kill trees? -- The age of trees -- What kills a tree? -- The tree's environment -- Virulent diseases -- Mechanical problems -- Starvation and old 'age' -- Further reading -- Further reading -- Index.