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Wiersema, John H. & León, Blanca 2013. World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference, Second Edition. CRC Press. 1336 p.
The book covers more than 12 000 vascular plants and plant products that are traded, regulated, or otherwise important to international commerce.
It contains more than 50 000 common names in all principal world languages. For languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian, names in original scripts are displayed (which is not the case in GRIN, but available in ISTA).
Data was extracted mostly from GRIN.
The book can be purchased through CRC at £95.00.
15 April 2013
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The plant of the month: Diospyros
Who knows that persimmon and ebonies belong to the same genus Diospyros ? En fact, this genus is mostly tropical, and is to be found worldwide with more than 500 species. Hundreds of species give black or striped ebony, and many tropical Diospyros give edible fruits. Some species are ornamental, et some of them can even be pruned into a hedge.
To untangle this situation, I inventoried all the used Diospyros in the world. As far as sources were available, we reach 115 species, for which Pl@ntUse proposes basic data and many links.
As a gift, you will find thorough notes on the etymology of names such as Diospyros, Ebenus et Plaquemine/Persimmon.
Pages have been created only in French for the moment, due to lack of time. You can help us translating!
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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.