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Books
Finally-a
field
guide
to
useful
tropical
plants
A Field Guide to Medicinal and Use-
ful Plants of the Upper Amazon.
James Lee Castner, Stephen Lee
Timme, and James Alan Duke. Fe-
line Press,
Gainesville, FL, 1998. 154
pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN
0-9625150-
7-8 paper).
During recent field work in the for-
ests of the lower Amazon, I shared
A
Field Guide to Medicinal and Useful
Plants of the Upper Amazon with
both researchers
and locals. A recur-
ring problem arose: Once the guide
left my hands, it was difficult to
retrieve. Vibrant color photos of
fruits, flowers, leaves, and whole
plants made it alluring for rural
Amazonians, who appreciated see-
ing pictures of many of the plants
they
use to fashion
crafts, roofs, food,
and medicine. For their part, ecolo-
gists and botanists enjoyed the con-
venience of viewing the fruiting and
flowering stages of over 100 tropical
species
without the nuisance
of swat-
ting mosquitos.
Although the book is entitled
Plants of the Upper Amazon, many
of the plants described are found
throughout Amazonia and the
Neotropics, and some are natural-
ized throughout tropical regions
worldwide.
By selecting
many plants,
not only those native to upper
Amazonia but also those native to
Africa, Asia, and Mesoamerica, the
authors broaden the book's appeal.
Travelers, scientists, and armchair
enthusiasts can enjoy information
on the botany and uses of globally
traded plants, such as avocado, ba-
nana, passion fruit, and pineapple,
while at the same time learning
fasci-
nating details about other, lesser-
known fruit, fiber, and medicinal
species found only in Amazonia.
The synergistic
team of authors-
tropical biologist and photographer
James Lee Castner, botanist Stephen
Lee Timme, and renowned ethno-
A "backyard
weed,"
purslane
(Postulaca
oleracea).
botanist James Alan Duke-state as
their purpose "to educate and enter-
tain in an informative, easy to use,
and enjoyable
manner...and
to fill an
unexploited literary
niche." As they
point out, despite
the flurry
of popu-
lar and scientific interest in rain-
forests and medicinal
plants, there is
a scarcity of easy-to-use photo field
guides. Through
the use of accessible
language and excellent photos, the
authors successfully convey a wealth
of botanical information
to the
public.
The concise
text covers wide ground,
including internationally traded
foods, such as papaya, vanilla,
mango, chocolate, and coffee; plant
precursors to modern medicinals,
such as curare and coca; tropical
medicinals, such as cat's claw; back-
yard "weeds," such as purslane and
pokeberry; and scores of lesser
known species.
Small and portable for easy use in
the field, the book includes, on each
page, one to three photos of the
featured plant and a two-part text
that covers taxonomic description
and uses. Origin, distribution, and
habitat are included for some but
not all of the plants; offering this
information for each species would
have given readers a clearer appre-
ciation of endemic versus widely
naturalized species. Plants are or-
dered
alphabetically
by genus,
which
could be confusing for nonbotanists;
however, Latin, Spanish, and com-
mon English names are supplied on
each page, and three
appendices,
one
August 1999 663
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for each type of name, offer quick
means of referencing the text. The
text is thoroughly grounded in cur-
rent scientific references, which aid
in identifying
the dedicated research-
ers who have devoted much of their
lives to documenting
the ever-dwin-
dling body of knowledge surround-
ing plants and their uses.
The botanical descriptions
are re-
markably fresh and conversational,
giving the impression that the au-
thors are standing in front of the
plant
describing
it to the
reader. Tech-
nical language is handled in a user-
friendly
fashion;
each botanical term
is preceded with a plainly worded
description, such as "parts which
pop apart (= explosive dehiscence)"
and "bell shaped blossoms (= cam-
panulate)."
Technical nomenclature
is also described pictorally in an il-
lustrated introduction to botanical
terminology.
The use of common
names,
a prac-
tice that is sometimes irritating to
botanists, can be a powerful way to
grab the imagination of the public.
The book's use of names such as
monkey ladder, chewing gum tree,
ice cream bean, and panama hat
"palm" make unfamiliar plants ac-
cessible to nonspecialists, who may
be more interested in what a plant
does than in what it "is." These
colorful names, along with vivid de-
scriptions, inform readers of a wide
range
of fascinating
plant
uses: Santa
Maria (Lepianthes peltata) keeps
away ticks and lice; bathing in wild
garlic (Ajo sacha) helps to protect
against evil, influenza, and fatigue;
and dwarf ginger (Mishquipanga
enano) is used to divine where ani-
mals are in the forest. In addition to
describing edible, medicinal, and
cultural uses, the book makes occa-
sional references to the ecosystem
functions of certain plants, such as
preventing erosion as living fences
or adding nitrogen to soil.
The close-up photos conveniently
highlight the distinguishing charac-
teristics of each species. The prolif-
eration of unusual tropical fruits and
voracious insects is evident in im-
ages of trees such as the genipap,
which has as much leaf area missing
as present. Pictures of freshly cut
rubber trees, night-blooming cala-
bash, starlike fruit of clusia, and
vegetable ivory in cross-section cap-
tivate the reader by depicting life
stages and species that even tropical
biologists may have missed in their
travels.
With its concise prose, A Field
Guide to Medicinal and Useful
Plants
of the Upper Amazon does more
than serve
as a field guide. This small
book attests to the ingenuity of
Amazonians in developing a wide-
ranging
pharmacopoeia,
to the criti-
cal role of tropical plants in the glo-
bal economy, and to the promise of
plants in our future. After perusing
the text, an ecologist with extensive
experience in Asia and Amazonia
commented, "the world should be
full of books like this."
PATRICIA
SHANLEY
Durrell Institute
of
Conservation
and
Ecology
The University
of Kent
Canterbury,
Kent CT2
7NJ
United
Kingdom
THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY
OF WHEAT
Geopolitics and the Green Revolu-
tion: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold
War. John H. Perkins. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, New York, 1997. 337
pp., illus. $60.00 (ISBN 0-19-
511013-7 cloth).
The discipline of political ecology
seeks to link the two theoretical con-
cepts of political economy and eco-
logical analysis. As a scientific out-
sider to this social science, I see its
strengths to lie in its multidisciplinary
nature and its dependency on actual
events. Geopolitics and the Green
Revolution remains true to these
strengths. The pivotal importance of
agricultural productivity in shaping
the present political, economic, and
social context is researched well and
presented suitably in this book. Our
urban-dominated society might be
surprised to learn of the connections
the author has uncovered between
domestic and foreign policy issues
and the history of wheat breeding.
Nevertheless, it would be advanta-
geous to our future supply of food
for the public to understand these
connections.
The term "Green Revolution" was
invented by the popular press to de-
scribe the dramatic increase in cereal
grain production in several parts of
the world beginning
in the late 1960s.
The
science of what became the Green
Revolution can be traced directly
back to the research findings and
subsequent interpretations of the
work of Darwin and Mendel. Au-
thor John H. Perkins painstakingly
follows the thread of genetic inherit-
ance and selection in wheat from its
seminal
beginnings,
through
work in
the early 1900s on the inheritance
of
disease resistance, to Norman E.
Borlaug's
Nobel Peace
Prize-winning
work on breeding semidwarf wheat
varieties. Along the way, Perkins
highlights
the lives and contributions
of those scientists who played piv-
otal roles in what has become mod-
ern wheat breeding.
For those read-
ers needing
a primer
on the botany of
wheat and its evolution into the
world's most important
food source,
the author provides a brief yet ad-
equate one.
The geographic backdrop on
which the book focuses includes the
United States, Mexico, Great Brit-
ain, and India. Seemingly
unrelated
historical occurrences
in these coun-
tries are shown to be not only related
but in fact closely linked. For ex-
ample,
in 1846 the British Corn Laws
were repealed, thus ending a tariff
barrier
on the importation of wheat
and other grains into Great Britain
from other European countries as
well as from North America. As a
result,
the British could import
wheat
for less than it cost them to produce
the crop themselves. The switch to
imported
wheat led to decreased
sta-
bility of commodity markets
in Brit-
ain and an increase in interdepen-
dency among Britain's trading
partners for basic food supplies.
Eventually, the leaders of many na-
tions realized that the key to eco-
nomic, political, and social survival
was a self-dependency on higher ag-
ricultural yields at reduced costs.
Countries that were simply unable
to meet their own food needs would
need to partner with allies. Thus,
agriculture (in particular, wheat)
became essential to the national se-
curity of these countries. Moreover,
excess agricultural production pro-
vided a way for countries to extend
their influence outside their own
borders. Each of the four countries
Perkins discusses managed to enhance
664 BioScience Vol. 49 No. 8
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