Hello and welcome to my primer on plant physiology, growth, and development. My name is Chris Wolverton, and I’m a professor in the Department of Botany & Microbiology at Ohio Wesleyan University. I created this site as a teaching tool for students in my Plant Physiology class, many of whom have taken our introductory courses in cell biology and organismal biology but have not had much exposure to plant science. In such cases, I’ve found my students struggled with the (excellent) textbooks in plant physiology and needed a bit more background to be able to be able to make sense of this fast-moving field. I see these short, topical articles as a bridge between a general introductory biology course and an upper-level, in-depth course on plant science. I hope you’ll find them useful as well, and where possible, I’ve included links to further information on each topic.

Here are some other references you might find useful as well:

• plantphys.info, which is in the same spirit as this site, but contains many more diagrams and visuals
• Teaching Tools in Plant Biology — aimed more at teachers at the college level, but may also be useful for students searching for more information