CRC Ethnobotany Desk Reference

Book excerpt: The CRC Ethnobotany Desk Reference contains almost 30,000 concise ethnobotanical monographs of plant species characteristics and an inventory of claimed attributes and historical uses by cultures throughout the world-the most ambitious attempt to date to inventory plants on a global scale and match botanical information with historical and current uses.To obtain the same information about any species listed, you would have to thumb through hundreds of herbal guides, ethnobotanical manuals, and regional field guides. Sources for this index include the three largest U.S. Government ethnobotany databases, the U.S. National Park Service NPFlora plant inventory lists, and 18 leading works on the subject.