The Economic Botany of Manilkara zapota (L.) Van Royen America is well versed in the use of a byproduct of the plant Manilkara zapota (L.) Van Royen, yet few people are aware of this product's history. Chewing gum has its origins in the economic botany of the Chicle tree (M. zapota). Throughout Mexico and Central America, the Sapotaceae plant family is recognized for its latex. Manilkara zapota (synonym: Achras zapota L.) is an evergreen canopy tree of medium size (15-30 meters in height) native
Trends In Economic Botany: The Rising Use Of Herbal Supplements The use of herbal remedies to treat health problems in humans is a tradition that dates back many centuries. A precursor to modern, Western pharmaceuticals, traditional healers used herbs to treat a wide range of ailments and afflictions. While many are familiar with their use by American Indians, the practice of herbal therapy dates back to ancient Chinese and Egyptian healers. Herbs were used in ancient times to treat anything
Washington Carver. Carver, a botanist, was known for his many inventions, especially those that related to peanuts and sweet potatoes. During his life, Carver created over 400 products using these ingredients. Carver’s many inventions changed the field of botany and the lives of many Americans. In the middle of the bloodiest war that America has ever seen, George Washington Carver was born in Diamond, Missouri to a widowed mother. Unfortunately for George, he was “kidnapped along with his sister and mother”
Ginseng Ginseng has long been recognized as an herb possessing great value. The first written record of the use of ginseng can be found in a Chinese Herbal dated in the 1st Century B.C. This Chinese Herbal, Shen-nung pen ts'ao ching, was surely preceded by a long verbal history of ginseng for in ancient China, ginseng was always held in the highest esteem as a powerful drug (5). History shows that early Chinese emperors placed great value in ginseng. Early emperors proclaimed its roots as having
The Culture of Cola: Social and Economic Aspects of a West African Domesticate The area of study known as "economic botany" is a wide-ranging one, but is most often concerned with the relationship between humans and the plants they utilize for food and medicine and raw materials for shelter, tools and other material needs. Less often mentioned, although not entirely neglected, are those plants that may be seen primarily as being of less obvious and direct material benefit to the people who use
to the New World. Often regarded as a common weed (Dept. of Agriculture 1955), many different species of Chenopodium can be found growing wild today throughout North and South America. The most significant of these in terms of cultivar progeny and economic utilization are the species Chenopodium berlandieri from Mexico and the Southwestern United States, and Chenopodium bushianum of the Eastern United States. Common names often applied to members of this genus Include goosefoot, lamb's quarter, and
plant counterparts and suggest that humans largely control domesticated plants; today, man seems free to choose what plants to grow whenever he pleases and wherever he wants. In Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, this notion of human control over plants is directly challenged. Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire explores the relationship between human desires and four plants, apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes, based on the premise that that they reveal a larger reciprocal relationship between
I. Introduction Liberty Hyde Bailey was an internationally known American botanist, horticulturist, and agricultural educator. He was also known for being a plant breeder, visionary, prolific writer, traveler, environmentalist among many other things. He was one of only two scientists that were inducted into the Hall of Fame for the American Society for Horticultural Science at its initiation in 1990. (NASA) He was a very wise man and once told the International Congress of Plant Sciences that “man’s
Asphodelaceae (Aloe Family) CLASSIFICATION Dahlgren et al. (1985) divided the Monocotyledons into several superorders of which the Liliiflorae is the largest. The order Asparagales is the largest of the five orders within Liliiflorea. One of the families within Asparagales recognized by Dahlgren and his co-workers was Asphodelaceae (Chase et al. (2000). Asphodelaceae consists of the sub-families, the Asphodeloideae and the Alooideae. The Alooideae consists of six genera of which Aloe is the largest
of Erromango is an area rich in biodiversity and a hotspot for a range of endemic flora and fauna. Among the most charismatic is a species of mega-flora named Agathis macrophylla. This South Pacific tree species is highly valued for its ecologic, economic, and social significance. Therefore it has become the cornerstone of this conservation effort for the government of Vanuatu and the local people of Erromango. The reserve is situated in the southwestern portion of Erromango and has been identified