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Wiersema, John H. & León, Blanca 2013. World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference, Second Edition. CRC Press. 1336 p.
The book covers more than 12 000 vascular plants and plant products that are traded, regulated, or otherwise important to international commerce.
It contains more than 50 000 common names in all principal world languages. For languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian, names in original scripts are displayed (which is not the case in GRIN, but available in ISTA).
Data was extracted mostly from GRIN.
The book can be purchased through CRC at £95.00.
15 April 2013
The plant of the month: Helianthus
Nowadays, sunflower is a commercial crop, whereas Jerusalem artichoke is viewed as a forgotten vegetable. It was the reverse in the XVI-XVIIIth centuries, when sunflower was considered as an occasional ornamental, and Jerusalem artichoke seen in Europe as competing with potato as a staple. Historical accounts show it clearly.
As an example, we offer the first known drawings of sunflower from Dodoens, and one of the first mentions of American plants by Champlain (1603)
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
- Questions and answers
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.
