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Zorkot, Nabil, 2010. Petits marchés de Côte d'Ivoire [Small markets of Côte d'Ivoire]. Abidjan, Editions Prophoto. 100 p.
I fell in love with this charming booklet, which shows Côte d'Ivoire with a very friendly eye, with plenty of photos of local markets. Many fruit and vegetables are seriously presented, among which gnangnan (Solanum anguivi) and okra, but also the Gouro toothpick, an aphrodisiac much commented on the Internet. If you want to know more, see Plants used as toothbrush.
Nevertheless, I suspect that the author is interested as well by the smiles of local saleswomen, which is no bad thing anyway.
10 June 2012
The plant of the month: Spanish broom
The Spanish broom, indigenous to the Mediterranean and an invasive in the USA, is most commonly known in Europe as an ornamental. But in a near past, it has been an important fiber plant, one of those known as spartum, and used to tie, make brooms and process linen. The last factory in France (Aspiran, Hérault) closed as lately as 1960. The areas where Spanish broom is dominant probably indicate places where it was sown and collected.
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 are beginning with French, except for books written in English. You can collaborate by translating.