The global market for herbs and spices is complex with diverse supply chains and products being sourced from a variety of businesses ranging from large scale producers to smallholders. Many herbs and spices grow wild and are farmed on a village or subsistence scale and there are often many intermediaries in the supply chain from farmer, collector to middle-man before arrival at the origin proce…
The banana plant is a large perennial herb with leaf sheaths that form trunk-like pseudostems. The plant has 8 - 12 leaves that are up to 270 cm long and 60 cm wide. Root development may be extensive in loose soils, in some cases up to 9 m laterally. Plant height, bunch size and various other characteristics depend on the variety. Flower development is initiated from the underground true stem (…
Umberto Quattrocchi has brought us some amazing and useful works through the various dictionaries that he has compiled. This time it is for two very important plant families the palms and the cycads that are synthesized here in these two volumes. Each entry is fascinating not just for the botany and full nomenclature of the plant species but for all the associated uses, folklore and interaction…
2008 NOMINEE The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Award for a Significant Work in Botanical or Horticultural Literature now we have easier and better access to grass data than ever before in human history. That is a marked step forward. Congratulazioni Professor Quattrocchi!-Daniel F. Austin, writing in Economic Botany &n
The CRC World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants: Common Names, Scientific Names, Eponyms, Synonyms, and Etymology provides the starting point for better access to data on plants used around the world in medicine, food, and cultural practices. The material found in the five volumes has been painstakingly gathered from papers of general interest, reports and records, taxonomic revision…
South Africa is rich in floral biodiversity as well as cultural diversity. The Cape region1 of South Africa has veldt types, with one of the richest compositions of indigenous aromatic plant species in the country. One such aromatic plant is the genus Agathosma. There are about 150 different species within this genus, which derives from a greater fa…
In this all-encompassing pharmacy, poisons loomed large. Tis might seem surprising given that today Chinese herbal remedies are widely imag-ined to be natural, mild, and safe, especially in comparison with the synthetic drugs of modern biomedicine, which are ofen perceived as artifcial, exceed-ingly strong, and with therapeutic efects inseparable from dangerous side efects. Another familiar dic…