Research Catalog

Title

Sampling the green world : innovative concepts of collection, preservation, and storage of plant diversity / edited by Tod F. Stuessy and S.H. Sohmer.

Publication

New York : Columbia University Press, ©1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Stuessy, Tod F.
• Sohmer, S. H.

Description

xvi, 289 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• The rapid losses in phytodiversity in recent years have put an impetus on plant taxonomists to address the issues of collection, preservation, and storage of botanical materials for future use. Scientists are increasingly concerned that only 15 percent of plant and animal diversity has been catalogued to date. Samples collected in the next fifty years may well represent the last information on many plant species.
• Botanists now realize that methods of documentation have been haphazard at best. Even today, materials gathered in the field are seldom scientifically handled, and recently acquired specimens often lack the most elemental details of location, ecology, and plant features. A clear program to chart and conserve the estimated 250-400,000 species of flowering plants and ferns is desperately needed.
• In Sampling the Green World, twenty-one leading experts in systematic botany outline an intelligent plan for mapping phytodiversity in the next half century. Opening with an historical overview of the documentation of plant diversity and a consideration of societal and scientific needs from plant collections, the book suggests lessons for the future.
• The authors continue with a comprehensive look at the protocols and procedures for collecting, documenting, storing, and preserving specimens for such purposes as phylogenetic reconstructions and pharmaceutical research. They consider methods of retaining images of plants that cannot be sampled, surveying advanced computerized video applications including virtual reality.
• The book closes with a discussion of techniques for dealing with specimens that have already been collected, considering that many storage environments may need to be improved.

Subject

• Botanical specimens > Collection and preservation > Congresses
• Botanical specimens > Collection and preservation
• Artenreichtum
• Artenschutz
• Pflanzen
• Kongress

Genre/Form

• proceedings (reports)
• Conference papers and proceedings
• Conference papers and proceedings.
• Actes de congrès.

Note

• Based on a symposium, sponsored by the Botanical Research Institute of Texas and the Herbarium of the Ohio State University, held in Forth Worth, Tex., Nov. 19-20, 1993.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contents

1. A Historical Overview of Documenting Plant Diversity: Are There Lessons for the Future? / Vernon H. Heywood -- 2. Societal and Scientific Information Needs from Plant Collections / Brian M. Boom -- 3. The Urgency of Documenting Plant Diversity: The Flora of the Philippines Project -- A Last Chance to Study the Plant Diversity of the Philippines / S.H. Sohmer -- 4. Statistical Adequacy of Plant Collections / Bernard R. Baum -- 5. Collecting Methodologies for Plant Samples for Pharmaceutical Research / James S. Miller -- 6. Images of Plant Diversity: Virtual Specimens and Graphic Glosses / James J. White -- 7. The Use of New Technologies to Create a Visual Archive of Plant Diversity / David W. Kramer -- 8. Implications of Virtual Technologies for Cognitive Diversity / Don Stredney -- 9. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems: Spatial Technologies for Preserving Phytodiversity / Michael N. DeMers.

ISBN

• 0231101368
• 9780231101363

LCCN

96003600

OCLC

• ocm34113676
• 34113676
• SCSB-2094892

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library