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Bertrand, Bernard, 2012. Le grand livre des ressources végétales. Comment se passer du pétrole grâce aux plantes. Photographies de Yannick Fourié. Toulouse, Plume de Carotte, 188 p. (in French).
Once again, the publisher Plume de Carotte releases a beautiful book about plants, of the kind you can offer as a gift to non-botanists. This time, it deals with plants which give (or used to give) objects of our current life, and the origin of which we generally ignore. For once, we don't hear about food, medicinal or ornamental plants, but instead dye plants, fibre plants, rubber and many kinds of wood.
Be careful, if you browse the book, you will fall in love with the photos. The publisher could have access to the objects conserved at the Botanic Garden at Kew, in the economic botany collection, which is certainly the best ethnobotanical collection worldwide. Full page photos are splendid, they alone justify buying the book.
We will of course regret some gaps (broom sorghum, oak tan, agaves…), and above all a too short list of references. But as it is, this book fills a big gap. In the current flood of plant books, it is very rare to see this issue addressed. We need to go back to the 1950's to find documentation, because the domination of petroleum derivatives was so broad that knowledge about such plants has been forgotten in Western countries. Yet everybody has at home a coir doormat, rattan furniture or a sorghum broom!
26 April 2012
The plant of the month: Artemisia
Be it mugwort (nicknamed herbe sainte) or wormwood (nicknamed mater herbarum, mother of herbs), Artemisia species have played a great role in pharmacopoeiea from Antiquity to modern days. In contrary, genépis have been known by botanists only since the 16th century. We present as a test some data on nomenclature, links to websites of scientific level and sources from pharmacopoeias (Cazin, Grieve) and historical dictionaries.
It is now up to you to contribute!
What is Pl@ntUse?
Pl@ntuse is a collaborative space for exchange of information on useful plants and uses of plants. It is not intended to duplicate existing encyclopedias (including Wikipedia), but to offer additional features such as:
- On-line resources that you can reuse
- Portal towards relevant resources available on Internet
- Thematic introductions to literature or any subject of interest
- Species lists (legumes grown in France, world cereals...)
- Popular names or vernacular names
- Portrait galeries of cultivars (varieties)
- Old books and articles on useful plants
- Original publications
- Iconography
- Question and answer area
The working method
It is of course scalable and open for discussion. But the basic idea is not to produce consensus summaries. It is rather to provide reliable material to allow everyone to make his/her own synthesis. A priority is to upload the data sets that underlie the work, but are rarely published, forcing everyone to start from scratch.
Any kind of page may be created. Templates have been devised to create pages with a similar structure and with similar content. Such pages are easily accessible through categories or portals. If you intend to upload new types of information, please ask the administrators, who will help you create and use a new template.
As is customary in the scientific community, we mention the author of each contribution. However, most of the contributions may be corrected or updated, as far as they reach consensus. See Help:Authors of contributions
Each page is potentially available in English and French. By default, we will begin with English, except for books written in French. You can collaborate by translating.
