Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline
The value of biodiversity and the need to preserve the untapped botanical resources of places like the Amazon rain forests is now widely acknowledged. Less widely understood but equally threatened is a key means of access to these resources, the knowledge and use of these plants by local nonliterate peoples whose traditional cultures are fast disappearing. This book explains and promotes ethnobotany, which investigates this knowledge by providing an overview of its history, practice, and value worldwide. Chapters are contributed by an impressive international array of field ethnobotanists, conservationists, and academics. Schultes spent many years as a field ethnobotanist, professor, and director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, where von Reis is an associate. This is an important, in-depth academic study of a discipline for those with a serious interest in ethnobotany. Libraries seeking more popular works might consider two books Schultes wrote with Robert F. Raffauf: the photographic essay Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men, Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia (Synergetic Pr., 1992) and The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia (Dioscorides Pr., 1990).?Marit MacArthur, Auraria Lib., DenverCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.