Economic Botany: Principles and Practices

✍ Scribed by Gerald E. Wickens (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 538
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The strength of this book is that it is written by someone who has spent a lifetime devoted to the science of economic botany. The author has brought together his vast experience in the field in Africa with his studies of arid land plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The result is an informative and reliable text that covers a vast range of topics. It is also firmly based upon the author's research and interest in plant taxonomy and therefore fully acknowledges the importance of correct naming and classification in the field of science of economic botany. The coverage is of economic botany in its broadest sense. I was delighted to find such topics as ecophysiology, plant breeding, the environment and conservation are included in the text. This gives the book a much more comprehensive coverage than most other texts on the subject. I was also glad to see that the book covers the use of various organisms that are no longer considered part of the plant kingdom such as various species of fungi and algae. It is indeed a broad ranging book that will be of use to many people interested in the uses of plants and fungi. Economic botany is once again being given more prominence as a discipline because of its enormous relevance to both conservation and sustainable development. Those people involved in those topics shOUld find this a most useful resource.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xiv
Economic Botany....Pages 1-16
Plant Collecting, Taxonomy and Nomenclature....Pages 17-42
Environmental Considerations....Pages 43-56
Plant Conservation....Pages 57-64
Ecophysiology and Allied Disciplines....Pages 65-103
Plant Breeding and Propagation....Pages 105-120
Marketing of Crops and Crop Products....Pages 121-126
Human and Animal Nutrition....Pages 127-149
Human Food and Food Additives....Pages 151-207
Feed for Livestock....Pages 209-222
Food for Bees and other Desirable Invertebrates....Pages 223-228
Timber and Wood Products....Pages 229-250
Fuel....Pages 251-261
Vegetable Fibres....Pages 263-279
Phytochemicals....Pages 281-315
Human and Veterinary Medicinal Plants....Pages 317-331
Plant Toxins and their Applications....Pages 333-346
Useful Ferns, Bryophytes, Fungi, Bacteria and Viruses....Pages 347-372
Useful Algae....Pages 373-388
Environmental Uses....Pages 389-402
Social Uses....Pages 403-414
At the Start of the 21st Century....Pages 415-421
Back Matter....Pages 423-535

✦ Subjects

Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Plant Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography; Forestry; Chemistry/Food Science, general