Ethnobotany Course Guide: Books

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.

Dissertation

Ethnobotany, the study of the classification, use and management of plants by people, draws on a range of disciplines, including natural and social sciences, to show how conservation of plants and of local knowledge about them can be achieved. Ethnobotany is critical to the growing importance of developing new crops and products such as drugs from traditional plants.  This book is the basic introduction to the field, showing how botany, anthropology, ecology, economics and linguistics are all employed in the techniques and methods involved. It explains data collection and hypothesis testing and provides practical ideas on fieldwork ethics and the application of results to conservation and community development. Case studies illustrate the explanations, demonstrating the importance of collaboration in achieving results.  Published with WWF, UNESCO and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

This reader in ethnobotany includes fourteen chapters organized in four parts. Paul Minnis provides a general introduction; the authors of the section introductions are Catherine S. Foeler (ethnoecology), Cecil H. Brown (folk classification), Timothy Jones (foods and medicines), and Richard I. Ford (agriculture). Ethnobotany: A Reader is intended for use as a textbook in upper division undergraduate and graduate courses in economic botany, ethnobotany, and human ecology. The book brings together for the first time previously published journal articles that provide diverse perspectives on a wide variety of topics in ethnobotany. Contributors include: Janis B. Alcorn, M. Kat Anderson, Stephen B. Brush, Robert A. Bye, George F. Estabrook, David H. French, Eugene S. Hunn, Charles F. Hutchinson, Eric Mellink, Paul E. Minnis, Brian Morris, Gary P. Nabhan, Amadeo M. Rea, Karen L. Reichhardt, Jan Timbrook, Nancy J. Turner, and Robert A. Voeks.

Designed for new scholars, this book features a quick and easy-to-read discussion of ethnobotany along with its major developments. The language is clear and concise, objective and straightforward, and structured to lead the reader from the beginning of this science to the most recent developments. While there are some books on ethnobotany, mainly dealing with methods, this book covers the topic in an introductory and comprehensive text that prepares the reader for more advanced study of ethnobotany.

An extraordinary compilation of the plants used by North American Native peoples for medicine, food, fiber, dye, and more. Anthropologist Daniel E. Moerman has devoted 25 years to the task of gathering the accumulated ethnobotanical knowledge on more than 4,000 plants. More than 44,000 uses for these plants by various tribes are documented in this book. This is undoubtedly the most massive ethnobotanical survey ever undertaken, preserving an enormous store of information for the future.

This item is in our Library's Rare Book Collection.
For access, please reach out to:
Rachel Cohen
rcohen7@alaska.edu
Phone: 907-474-6632

Discoveries of new drugs, organic pesticides, and other plant uses based on research in traditional cultures are increasingly common. The study of human/plant interactions which draws on the methods of antropology, botany, pharmacology and other disciplines is reported here. The text highlights the discovery of new drugs and chemical compounds and insights into conservation in order to aid understanding of the relationship between humans and plants.

The genus Rhodiola (Family Crassulaceae) is indigenous to Northern Canada, Europe and Asia where its rhizomes and roots have been used for centuries for medicinal purposes. Recent interest in the species Rhodiola rosea (roseroot) in the West arose from the use of the rhizome as an adaptogen for the treatment of stress, but in the last few years, ch

In this book, close to one hundred men and women from all over southwest Alaska share knowledge of their homeland and the plants that grow there. They speak eloquently about time spent gathering and storing plants and plant material during snow-free months, including gathering greens during spring, picking berries each summer, harvesting tubers from the caches of tundra voles, and gathering a variety of medicinal plants. The book is intended as a guide to the identification and use of edible and medicinal plants in southwest Alaska, but also as an enduring record of what Yup'ik men and women know and value about plants and the roles plants continue to play in Yup'ik lives.