The Carnivorous Plants (1989 book)

The Carnivorous Plants

Dust jacket showing Nepenthes pervillei
Author	Barrie E. Juniper, Richard J. Robins, Daniel M. Joel
Language	English
Publisher	Academic Press
Publication date	1989
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	xii + 353
ISBN
OCLC	20955562

The Carnivorous Plants is a major work on carnivorous plants by Barrie E. Juniper, Richard J. Robins, and Daniel M. Joel. It was published in 1989 by Academic Press. Much of the book was written by the three authors over an eight-year period at Oxford University's Botany School (later the Department of Plant Sciences).

Although sharing its title with Francis Ernest Lloyd's classic 1942 work, this treatment focuses primarily on physiology and biochemistry, reflecting the authors' areas of expertise. It also deviates from Lloyd's work in that content is organised by biological mechanism rather than by genus.

The book has two appendices: the first is a summary of letters sent by Rebecca Merritt Austin to W. M. Canby regarding her field observations of Darlingtonia in the 1870s; the second concerns Matthew Jebb's observations of Nepenthes in Papua New Guinea (a precursor to Jebb's "An account of Nepenthes in New Guinea", published two years later).The Carnivorous Plants includes around 1160 references and 174 figures, all of which are in black and white. The book has been described as "the most recent comprehensive scientific monograph" on carnivorous plants, and the third of its kind following Charles Darwin's Insectivorous Plants in 1875 and Lloyd's The Carnivorous Plants in 1942.

Donald Schnell reviewed the work for the June 1989 issue of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter:

Typeface is large and quite readable. Binding is of moderate quality (the boards of my copy came warped), and while the paper is not fully glazed, it is moderately heavy and reproduces the photowork well. [...] The authors certainly have their credentials in the area that is covered in most detail and best in the book: New concepts of anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry related to the carnivorphyte syndrome. [...] Unfortunately there are several errors of substance and omission, particularly in areas where the authors look into field botany, ecology, evolutions [sic] and plain "natural history".