Botanical Atlas. Karl von Hoffmann

Color images of plants that convey not only the shape, size and ratio of parts, but also the natural coloring and structural features, are the best visual aids for familiarization with the plant world.
The plant world of the Earth is so diverse that its full description cannot be included in any publication. This would require a whole library. This atlas, the author of which is the German botanist Karl von Hoffmann (1802-1883), covers only a small part of the flora. "The proposed botanical atlas has the task of giving the opportunity to persons interested in and engaged in botany, to acquire a public manual for a visual familiarization with his native flora. The main place in the atlas is given to flowering and higher spore plants, which before others attract the attention of an amateur, from the lower spore plants, only a few representatives of the most striking, ”wrote Professor N. Monversee in the preface to the atlas.
The plant world covers organisms that are diverse in its appearance, shape and size - from giant baobabs and slender palm trees to small mosses and lichens that cover the tundra of the north. We can observe countless transitions and the endless diversity of lifestyle, size and external forms of plants. The world of plants includes the giant forests of Siberia and Amazons, and tiny mushrooms or mold, covering wooden buildings. And in a microscope we can see the smallest algae and mushrooms, completely indistinguishable by the naked eye. And no matter how great the gap between the individual representatives of the plant world, they all belong to the kingdom of nature.
From the world of animals, plants differ in the main method of nutrition, the lack of ability to arbitrary movements and other sensitivity. It should be noted, however, that these differences have power (and even then with some restrictions) only when comparing higher animals with higher plants. If we turn to the lower organisms, we will see that the differences between animals and plants are more and more fed. Finally, we find forms that can no longer be with confidence either to animals or plants (some primitive marine organisms) Thus, animals and plants are not separated by impenetrable abyss. On the contrary, the plant and animal world are, as it were, two powerful branches that originate from a common root, but diverging far in opposite directions.
Compilation: Astakhov A.Yu