As physical monuments go, the 3-foot stack of botany books hardly looks imposing. But as a legacy of plant-science scholarship and education, the UC Davis texts tower above the rest.

The set of textbooks boasts a lineage of UC Davis co-authors going back to 1924, with a new edition in the works

"I doubt there's another textbook with a lineage like this in the United States," said Tom Rost, professor of plant biology, associate dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and one of eight co-authors of the textbook series that stretches over 78 years in publication.

Rost recently donated a set of 20 textbook volumes, 13 laboratory and instructors manuals, a box of slides, and a set of overhead transparencies to the special collections in Shields Library.

"I didn't want it to be lost. It's important to me and the other authors and hopefully to others as well," he said.

The first book was A Textbook of General Botany, which went through four editions from 1924 to 1938. Next came Botany: an Introduction to Plant Science, with six editions from 1950 to 1992. A shorter version for a quarter or semester-long course Botany: A Brief Introduction to Plant Biology came out in 1979, with a second edition in 1982. With a change in publishers, the book was renamed Plant Biology in 1998.

University archivist John Skarstad said the books could prove a mine of information for science historians, providing an unbroken timeline of advances in plant biology over three-quarters of a century.

Farming was a major focus of the first book, written by botanists Richard Holman of UC Berkeley and Wilfred Robbins, who taught at what was then the University Farm in Davis and was one of UC Davis' founding faculty members. Robbins Hall is named after him.

Over the years, the books went through a number of renditions, with new authors bringing expertise in cell biology, plant anatomy, biochemistry, ecology, molecular biology and other fields that were transforming plant biology.

After Holman died in the early 1930s, the books became solely a UC Davis production, with botanist T. Eliot Weier joining Robbins as co-author. Among other authors over the years, three still teach on campus - Rost, environmental horticulture professor Michael Barbour and plant biology professor Terence Murphy. Two others are retired: Ralph Stocking, professor emeritus of plant biology; and Robert Thornton, senior lecturer emeritus of plant biology.

The five current authors - Rost, Barbour, Stocking, Murphy, and Thornton - are negotiating a contract for a new edition, which they expect to publish in 2004.

Rost said he began collecting the series of books even before he became a co-author in 1977. "I just like old books," he said. "And this was a series that was happening here so it had meaning in that sense."

In the 1960s and 1970s, the books were the best-selling botany texts in the United States, Rost said. Students in other countries used them as well, and still use the current edition. Among the books Rost collected were translations published in Mexico and Malaysia.

Also among the set is a 1965 leather-bound special edition signed by the publisher, John Wiley, as well as a number of campus scientists.

Rost said the success of the textbooks reflects UC Davis' longstanding strength in plant sciences. "The botany department was one of the first departments established on campus," he said. "The faculty members who have been involved in botany from the beginning have been world leaders and still are to this day."

Stocking has held the longest run as co-author, starting in 1959. At age 89, he is working from his home in Trinidad on California's far north coast on his two chapters for the next edition.

In updating each edition, Stocking said he always strived to keep the science as current as possible but still understandable for introductory students. "As the science advanced, we tried to keep up," he said.

Writing the 1998 edition required Stocking to keep up in other ways. Although he had composed on a manual typewriter for most his career, the new manuscript needed to be submitted electronically. At Rost's urging, Stocking bought a Macintosh computer and took a course to learn to use it.

Murphy, a cell biologist and the newest co-author, said he boned up on the books himself when he joined the UC Davis botany faculty in 1971. In 1988, he joined the team of authors. "It's very difficult to write a text in a field where things are changing so much," he said. "I was surprised that it worked as smoothly as it did."

Murphy said the books' far-flung influence on plant-biology education has been rewarding. "We get reviews and comments from a lot of people from the rest of the country asking us where they can get the book, or asking what we're going to do next."