Ethnobotany Books - Page 4

Wild Plants and Native Peoples of the Four Corners

William W. Dunmire, Gail D. Tierney

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the second book in a series by Dunmire and Tierney, exploring native plant uses. The book emphasises prehistoric uses of plants in the Four Corners area; focusing on Mesa Verde National Park, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Aztec Ruins, Hovenweep, and other major sites of the region once occupied by the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Hopi, and Apache people. Dunmire and Tierney are able to eloquently illustrate: the importance of the people-plant relationship that has existed throughout the ages among native people; and how ancient traditional uses of these plants inform contemporary uses today. Through vignettes of background information drawn from lore and cultural traditions and interviews with tribal elders, "Wild Plants and Native Peoples of the Four Corners" describes uses for edible, medicinal, and dye plants, as well as plants used for making baskets, tools, and shelters. Complementing these essays are profiles of fifty new trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, and grasses common to traditional Native America.

Ethnobotany: The Evolution of a Discipline

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

All about Ethnobotany 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 30 people found this review helpful.

This book is a great compilation from leading ethnobotanists, describing the field, and bringing pertinent issues to the fore. It is an excellent collection, with well-renowned ethnobotanists like Plotkin, Balick, and Naranjo. It is an excellent source, and tells all about ethnobotany, the science that may preserve human existence now, and in the future.

Wowsers! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Great book for you plant nerds out there...a book edited by the late great Richard Schultes?...what more can you ask for?

Editorial Review:

Published on the 100th anniversary of the science of ethnobotany, this volume provides a comprehensive summary of the history and current state of the field. The 36 articles present a truly global perspective on the theory and practice of today's ethnobotany.

Applied Ethnobotany: People, Wild Plant Use and Conservation

Anthony Cunningham

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Editorial Review:

Wild or non-cultivated plants are crucial to the lives of a large portion of the world's population, providing low-cost building materials, fuel, food supplements, medicines, tools and sources of income. Despite their importance, their vulnerability to harvesting and other social impacts is not well understood. This is the first practical guide to be published on how to manage wild plant species sustainably.

This practical manual on the value and management of wild plant resources sets out the approaches and field methods involved in participatory work between conservationists and researchers and the primary resource users. Supported by extensive illustrations, it explains how local people can learn to assess the pressures on plant resources and what steps to take to ensure their continued availability. This guide will be invaluable for all those involved in resource management decisions regarding plant species and diversity, in particular those studying or working in conservation, rural development and park management.

Published in association with WWF International and UNESCO

The Secret Forest (A University of Arizona Southwest Center Book)

Charles Bowden, Jack W. Dykinga

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Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest

Mark J. Plotkin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Searching for new medicines in the rain forest? What? 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I believe that the author of this book should review it. I did not fine any searching in this book.

unapologetically unprepared, poorly written, city slicker 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Mark Plotkin, we learn in this book, collected a lot of information from natives of the Amazon. I myself am not a field scientist, but I assume this reflects a certain amount of charisma. If Plotkin's charismatic, he's a terrible writer: the sort of story which _ought_ to be thrilling, and (you would hope) would be if he were telling you in person, is simply dull. Moments alluded to in other reviews --the electric eel close call, the burrowing flea-- are episodes only a few dispassionate, tell-don't-show sentences long. (And it's enough to mention that his dialog is unbelievably unbelievable, that his editor never learned that in a short and quickly-read book you don't chunks of information repeated from one chapter to the next, or that there is an art to mixing narrative with scholarly history-- that just mixing them up doesn't make it work.)

Plotkin is not his inspirational teacher, RE Shultes, or his inspirational mentor, R Mittermeier. He keeps his shoes on, he wears clean white shirts, he learns the rudiments of a single language while in the field, he carries water on hikes when he _knows and tells us_ that as soon as he runs out all he has to do is mention it and a local will point him to the appropriate stand of vegetation. Parts of several stories involve bits like, 'I [endangered my friend's life/seriously insulted someone/etc] -- but you know, I hadn't learned about that sort of thing.'

Maybe you still think you should read this, because you're interested in the medicinal or psychoactive uses of plants. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly all of Plotkin's work under shamans reads like this: 'I collected a sample of the plant. Maybe lab work will someday (though probably not with my sample, because it's dried) find an important compound in it.'

While there is no absolutely no question that Plotkin was doing invaluable work by preserving Amazonian medicinal plant knowledge (and, again, I bet that, thanks to these experiences, he is more than the embarrassing city slicker he writes as), this is not the book to read about it in.

Editorial Review:

A century ago, malaria was killing Washingtonians, Londoners, Parisians. Today HIV, along with various cancers, has taken its place among worldwide epidemics. Quinine, extracted from the cinchona tree of the Amazonian rainforest, quelled malaria; alkaloids taken from trees in the West African rainforest may well yield a cure for AIDS. Yet those woods, Mark Plotkin tells us, are fast disappearing, along with the native peoples who know the powers of the plants that dwell there. His account of wandering through the Amazonian jungles focuses on local knowledge about plants, whose uses range from the mundane to the magical. The rainforests of the world, Plotkin notes, are our greatest natural resource, an intercultural pharmacy that can cure woes both known and yet unvisited.

Ethnobotany: Principles and Applications

C. M. Cotton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Interest in ethnobotany has increased dramatically in recent years. The search for new medicines by the pharmaceutical industry has turned to plant natural products and to ethnobotanical studies as a first step in bioprospecting. These studies are making a valuable contribution to the cataloguing of biological diversity and hence to the conservation of endangered ecosystems and the human societies which depend upon them. Discussing traditional methods of plant management as well as plant use, this textbook is an authoritative and fascinating introduction to this exciting area of plant biology. Citing examples from throughout the world and drawing on a wide range of source materials, the author describes the history of the interactions between plants and people and the concepts, methodology and future direction of ethnobotanical study. Capturing current interest in traditional medicine, as well as the potential for exciting new drug discoveries, Ethnobotany: Principles and Applications is an informative, stimulating and timely text which includes an extensive bibliography.

The History and Folklore of North American Wildflowers

Timothy Coffey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The History and Folklore of North American Wildflowers 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

If you find yourself wondering about wildflowers and how they were appreciated by those many generations before us, then this is a wonderful book to add to your library. I found various aspects of this book to be helpful, including the biographical notes on Pliny the Elder, Peter Kalm and many others. The author also lists regional names for plants; for instance Garlic Mustard is also known as Sauce-Alone. The book is easy to read, and gives interesting historical information from various sources on the medicinal and other uses of wildflowers. The line drawings add a nice touch. Keep in mind that the book is geared toward history and is not meant as a guide for identifying plants. Good companion books to this would be any of the Peterson's Field Guides to Wildflowers and/or Medicinal Plants.

Rare, perhaps soon-to-be lost, botanical esoterica 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

There are things in this book I have never heard anywhere else. It is an unusual compilation of historical plant literature, which like much ethnobotany could one day simply vanish from the collective conscience.

The historical anecdotes are wide-ranging and memorable, e.g. Arrow Arum tubers were a staple food of mid-Atlantic Indian tribes; Jimsonweed's strongly hallucinogenic alkaloids were a favorite tool of medieval "wenches... so skilled in [the] dosing of it, that they [could] make a man mad for as many hours as they [pleased];" the Pawnee Indians swore by a perfume made of crushed Columbine seeds...

I cringe at the thought of how much plant knowledge was once commonly known and used, yet now stands on the brink of extinction. I liken it to a pile of never-published Bach or Vivaldi manuscripts rotting away in some attic, when they instead could bring joy to millions.

Editorial Review:

This highly entertaining reference book presents the popular lore, social history, and practical uses of nearly seven hundred native flowers.

Seed to Civilization: The Story of Food

Charles Heiser

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Fun with food 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

What are the major plants and animals on which humans subsist? Where do these plants and animals come from? This book addresses these and other questions related to food. It does so in a highly readable format, assuming no prior botanical or zoological knowledge. It organizes the discussion along chapter topics such as "Grasses: The staff of live." Learn that yams have served as a source of steroid hormones, that sugar is a grass from the South Pacific and observe how cauliflower, kale and brussels sprouts all derive from a single plant species. On the down side, this book's treatment of genetic engineering is outdated and the faith given to improvements in crop production not well reconciled with a concluding chapter on food problems, e.g. pesticide use. But these weaknesses are outweighed to the reader seeking a concise, interesting overview of the foods on which we subsist.

About the Book 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is not a book about hunger. Rather it concerns mostly the plants and animals that stand between us and starvation. The subject can be called ethnobiology, the study of plants and animals in relation to humans. Ecology, the study of organisms in relation to their environment, is another of our concerns. In this case we are the organisms and the part of the environment of interest to us is the plants and animals that provide our food.

In this book I begin with some consideration of the origin of agriculture and why plants and animals were domesticated. The bulk of the book is concerned with basic food plants and animals, and covers where and when they were first domesticated as well as why and how they are used. I have, however, not hesitated to stray from the principal subjects from time to time when I have felt that the digression would be of general interest to my readers. There is, for example, some mention of the uses of plants and animals for purposes other than food. In this edition I have extensively revised several chapters, completely rewritten the last two, and increased the number of plants treated. In addition, I have incorporated some new photographs.

Only one chapter is given to the discussion of animals and its focus is on those most important as food. As I am a botanist, some may think that I have neglected animals in favor of plants, but in defense I can point out that we get all of our carbohydrates and nearly three-fourths of our protein from plant sources. Moreover, nearly all of the food we get from animals is in turn derived from plants. After all, life depends on photosynthesis; chlorophyll has been referred to as the green blood of the earth. The last chapter concerns current and future food problems and, perhaps, some controversial topics ..

The book has been written with the general reader in mind and no particular background in biology should be necessary Jor understanding

most of the topics. I had once assumed that the readers of a book such as this would have an elementary knowledge of human nutrition, but, judging from recent news releases, that assumption was unjustifiable, for malnutrition is not confined to the poor and uneducated but extends to the affluent and "educated" as well. Therefore, a brief treatment of nutrition is given (Chapter 3).

Although I have not tried to include all of my sources, there is a fairly extensive and updated bibliography at the end of the book. This is included primarily for those readers who would like to pursue any sub­ject in greater detail. Although I expect the same plants and animals to continue to serve as our principal foods for a long time to come, our detailed knowledge concerning them will change as research makes more information available. Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in the realm of prehistory, for the next archaeological investigation may uncover new information regarding the "invention" of agriculture and the earliest domesticated plants and animals.

There are a number of individuals to whom I am indebted for their advice. My thanks to all of them, particularly Gregory Anderson, Vir­ginia Flack, Gunder Hefta, Jorge Soria, and my wife, Dorothy. Thanks also to those who supplied the illustrations.

Plant Technology of First Peoples in British Columbia (Royal British Columbia Museum Handbook)

Nancy J. Turner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Ethnobotany gem 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Nancy Turner's book on plant uses by the First Peoples of British Columbia is a treasure house of ancient knowledge: how the plants of the Pacific Northwest were used by the original inhabitants. In an aboriginal technology, plants were used in almost every aspect of life: housing, clothing, transportation, weapons, fishing lines, basketry--all depended on skillful manipulation of plant materials. Organized by plant group, each plant's uses are discussed. The book will appeal to craft workers as much as anthropologists and other students of native woods lore because the methods of preparation are included.

Editorial Review:

In her third ethnobotany handbook, Nancy Turner focuses on the plants that provided heat, shelter, transportation, clothing, implements, nets, ropes, and containers -- the necessities of life for Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Turner describes more than a hundred of these plants, their various uses and their importance in the material cultures of Native Americans. Each description is accompanied by a color photograph of the plant to aid in its identification.

Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest

Paul Alan Cox

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Paul Alan Cox has been honored worldwide for his work as an ethnobotanist, searching for plants that can be used to cure breast cancer, AIDS, and other diseases. Cox was recently hailed by Time magazine as a "hero of medicine" and awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work in Samoa, where in one year he made important ethnobotanical discoveries, gained official protection for a rare species of flying fox, launched an international campaign to save a 30,000-acre rain forest from logging, and then helped to rebuild a village destroyed by a hurricane.

In Nafanua, Cox describes his experiences in Samoa, where he studied traditional rain forest remedies with native healers and was honored by the villagers of Falealupo with the chiefly title of Nafanua, the legendary goddess who saved Samoa. A gifted storyteller, Cox describes a world that is an amalgam of the indigenous and the industrial, where ancient beliefs and communal values coexist with Jeeps, SPAM, and transistor radios. In addition to describing his research, Cox discusses the historic misperception of the South Seas, early explorers, and missionaries, who today are more often ecological than religious. A beautifully written story of scientific and personal discovery, Nafanua is a testament to the power of nature to both heal and destroy - and to the equally powerful human capacity for faith and perseverance against seemingly impossible odds.