Vegetable Teratology

Unusual leaves, joined stems and flowers that take on unexpected forms provide the material for Maxwell T. Masters's detailed botanical study. Vegetable Teratology arranges departures from ordinary plant structure by changes in position, form, number, size and consistency. Its contents range from tubular petals and double flowers to altered leaf shapes, additional branches and changes of colour, with numerous illustrations accompanying the examples.

Masters also considers how such variations arise. His discussion of leaflike flowers distinguishes their development from the production of leaf buds in place of flower buds, weighing the timing of growth, nutrition and injury. Lists of affected plants and references to other observers give the work the character of a scientific reference. Readers interested in botanical history or the close observation of plant growth can follow how nineteenth-century researchers classified unusual specimens and debated their causes.