“A sweeping history of the origins, development, and future of herbaria and their role in plant consternation.” —The American Gardener Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grew around them, organizing the specimens into collections. Known as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor. Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into this unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world’s flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today.

Essentials of Botanical Extraction: Principles and Applications provides a unique, single source of valuable information on the various botanical extraction methods available, from conventional to the use of green and modern extraction technologies including ultrasounds, microwaves, pressurized liquids, and supercritical fluids. Most extracts obtained from botanicals are often poorly characterized with unidentified active or inactive constituents. A wise selection of an extraction strategy is vital to drug discovery from medicinal plants as extraction forms the basic first step in medicinal plant research. This book also explores the mathematical hypotheses and innovations in botanical extractions and analyzes different post extraction operations so that dependency on serendipity is reduced and the same be converted into programmed drug discovery. - Reviews the history and current state of natural product drug discovery and development, highlighting successes and current issues - Explains the application of chemometric tools in extraction process design and method development - Introduces process intensification as applied to the processing of medicinal plant extracts for rapid and cost-effective extraction

Facsimile of a dried plant album assembled by the young Emily Dickinson, with interpretive essays and catalog and index of plant specimens.

"Contains chapters on the conservation of herbarium sheets and on the collection and curation of the larger algae. The chapter on computers has been completely rewritten and much enlarged, as have those on pests and treatments, larger fungi and economic botany. The sections on liquid preservatives and on pesticides have been revised to take into account new health and safety regulations. An essential reference work for herbarium managers and technicians and for all those who are involved with the making and maintenance of herbarium collections." --NHBS Environment Bookstore.

Museum curators enter the profession with a specialist subject qualification and yet at some point in their career, many curators find themselves in charge of a range of collections outside of their expert knowledge. Interpreting, curating and caring for mixed collections demands of curators a wide range of knowledge and understanding. The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is designed to give curators the fundamental information and confidence they need to manage and care for all of the collections within their responsibility, regardless of their previous training and experience. Comprising two sections – Museum Collections, and Collection Development and Care – the chapters cover archaeology, art, history, military and natural sciences collections, as well as heritage properties. Every chapter in the book is focused on one type of collection, but all chapters in the collection management section contain advice on topics such as organisational philosophy, documentation, legal issues and materials in order to provide a useful and comprehensive guide to managing collections. The collection care section is structured in the same way, considering the issues of storage; display; handling; moving; packing; housekeeping; health and safety; emergency preparedness; and pest, pollution, environmental, light and vibration management. The contributors to this book are experienced museum professionals, each with their own specialism and a deep understanding of what it means to work in the context of mixed collections. Providing a highly practical guide, The Curation and Care of Museum Collections is essential reading for curators working in all types of museums, galleries and heritage sites, and for students of museology courses around the world.

This open access multi-authored book presents a 'state of the science' synthesis of knowledge on the biodiversity of Angola, based on sources in peer-reviewed journals, in books and where appropriate, unpublished official reports. The book identifies Angola as one of the most biologically diverse countries in Africa, but notes that its fauna, flora, habitats and the processes that drive the dynamics of its ecosystems are still very poorly researched and documented. This 'state of the science' synthesis is for the use of all students of Angola's biodiversity, and for those responsible for the planning, development and sustainable management of the country's living resources. The volume brings together the results of expeditions and research undertaken in Angola since the late eighteenth century, with emphasis on work conducted in the four decades since Angola's independence in 1975. The individual chapters have been written by leaders in their fields, and reviewed by peers familiar with the region.

As poetic symbols or scientific models, flowers have often been invoked to explain nature's harmonizing of expression, attraction, and reproduction. Words can lie, but flowers seem to speak plainly nature's own language. Flowers thrive as both botanical and literary phenomena in the works of Goethe, Rousseau, and Ruskin and serve as essential points of reference for Rilke, Proust, Genet, Ponge, Cixous, Derrida, and many others. This book explores the links between the flowers of nature and the flowers of metaphor. No longer rooted in a system of symbols, as they have been in many times and cultures, the flowers of modern literature are ambiguous and changeable. As examples of nature's finery and plenitude they justify not only finery and plentitude, but also questions and contradictions. They are flagrantly colorful or delicate and secretive. Yet throughout the Western traditional flowers have most frequently been considered feminine by male and female writers alike. It is this attachment that Sartiliot pursues to the end, questioning the place of flowers in Cixous's writings and in contemporary feminism.

This book presents for the first time an up-to-date and easy-to-read translation of a medical reference work that was used in Western Europe from the fifth century well into the Renaissance. Listing 185 medicinal plants, the uses for each, and remedies that were compounded using them, the translation will fascinate medievalist, medical historians and the layman alike.