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Book reviewed in this article:PRACTICAL WOODY PLANT PROPAGATION FOR nursery growers. Bruce Macdonald. 669 pp., 496 text plates as well as text diagrams. B.T. Batsford Ltd., London. 1986.DICTIONARY OF PLANT NAMES. Allen J. Coombes. 207 pp. Collingridge Books, Felt‐ham. 1985.the lilies of china. Stephen G. Haw. 152 pp., 20 line illustrations, 1 map, 1 table showing distribution, 9 colour plates. B.T. Batsford Ltd., London. 1986.notes on economic botany of china. Facsimile Reprint. Augustine Henry. Introduction by E.C. Nelson, xv + 68 pp. Boethius Press, Kilkenny. 1986.

Crop Resources contains papers that were originally presented as a symposium on Crop Resources at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany in Urbana, Illinois, 13-17 June 1976. The volume attempts to evaluate (a) the possible nonfood uses of cultivated plants; (b) the extent to which new and additional food resources may become available; (c) the prospects of several specialized uses of plants such as drugs, insecticides, rubber, and condiments; and (d) the origin of four major crops of the American Midwest and prospects for their future development. The discussions include t

vol. 2,5 printed by Robinson & Co. ; Issued in parts each with special t. p. ; "Published under the auspices of Natal Government and Durban Botanical Society." ; Mode of access: Internet.

We examined and analyzed methods used to create numerical equivalence between sites affected by development and proposed conservation offset sites. Application of biodiversity offsetting metrics in development impact and mitigation assessments is thought to standardize biodiversity conservation outcomes, sometimes termed yield by those conducting these calculations. The youth of biodiversity offsetting in application, however, means little is known about how biodiversity valuations and offset contracts between development and offset sites are agreed on in practice or about long-term conservation outcomes. We examined how sites were made commensurable and how biodiversity gains or yields were calculated and negotiated for a specific offset contract in a government-led pilot study of biodiversity offsets in England. Over 24 months, we conducted participant observations of various stages in the negotiation of offset contracts through repeated visits to 3 (anonymized) biodiversity offset contract sites. We conducted 50 semistructured interviews of stakeholders in regional and local government, the private sector, and civil society. We used a qualitative data analysis software program (DEDOOSE) to textually analyze interview transcriptions. We also compared successive iterations of biodiversity-offsetting calculation spreadsheets and planning documents. A particular focus was the different iterations of a specific biodiversity impact assessment in which the biodiversity offsetting metric developed by the U.K.'s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was used. We highlight 3 main findings. First, biodiversity offsetting metrics were amended in creative ways as users adapted inputs to metric calculations to balance and negotiate conflicting requirements. Second, the practice of making different habitats equivalent to each other through the application of biodiversity offsetting metrics resulted in commensuration outcomes that may not provide projected conservation gains. Third, the pressure of creating value for money diminished projected conservation yields.

The COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on the global economy, and current delays in the negotiation of the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity heighten the urgency to build back better for biodiversity, sustainability, and well-being. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) concluded that addressing biodiversity loss requires a transformative change of the global economic system. Drawing on the IPBES findings, this policy perspective discusses actions in four priority areas to inform the post-2020 agenda: (1) Increasing funding for conservation; (2) redirecting incentives for sustainability; (3) creating an enabling regulatory environment; and (4) reforming metrics to assess biodiversity impacts and progress toward sustainable and just goals. As the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear, and the negotiations for the post-2020 agenda have emphasized, governments are indispensable in guiding economic systems and ust take an active role in transformations, along with businesses and civil society. These key actors must work together to implement actions that combine short-term impacts with structural change to shift economic systems away from a fixation with growth toward human and ecological well-being. The four priority areas discussed here provide opportunities for the post-2020 agenda to do so. biodiversity conservation, economic systems, green finance, incentives, metrics, policy, regulation, subsidies, trade, transformative change ; publishedVersion

Vol. ii-vi "by J.M. Wood." ; "Published under the auspices of Natal government and Durban Botanic Society." ; Subtitle varies. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Balata or bullet tree of Guiana was known as one of the finest forest trees of British Guiana. This paper is based on reports from the 19th and 20th centuries (mainly from George Jenman and Everard im Thurn), publications, newspapers, and correspondence on British Guiana's balata, a rubber-like material. These references were cross-referenced with objects related to balata that are now preserved at the collection of Economic Botany, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as well as with contemporary reports from Guyanese Amerindian. By doing this, a more precise image of this less known rubber material from Guyana came forth, as well as the issues and histories behind it, namely the cross-cultural encounters, the objects significance and their context, and how the colony was managed. Despite the fact that balata was seen, during the last years of the 19th century, as an alternative commodity and a possible answer to the sugar crisis, not much was done to improve its trade.

"This catalogue was undertaken . to complete the list of economic products exhibited in the Madras museum, commenced by Mr. Narasinga Rao in 1916 in his 'Catalogue of wood specimens'."--Pref. ; At head of title: Madras government museum. ; Vegetable products.--Animal products.--Mineral products. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In the first part of this paper selected narratives of early exploration of Northwest Amazonia are analysed with the intention to reveal the values that colonisers and scientist hold at the moment of encountering indigenous peoples. It is argued that these values were transformed and adapted for the development of Economic Botany. The discussion continues on questioning: 'Were ethnosciences shaped by imperialistic motives?', 'Has the ethnology of Northwest Amazonia contributed to intercultural dialogue or has it all been part of a colonialist project of Northwest Amazon?'. In the second part of the paper a narrative is presented. The narrative describes a process through which the values of liberal democracy were to be imprinted in indigenous peoples' organisations of the Colombian Amazonia during the 1990s. Leví-Strauss' perspective of intervention: "the society we belong to is the only society we are in a position to transform without risk of destroying it" (Levi-Strauss1973: 392) its taken to develop a critical appraisal of the process described. The paper finalises with a call for ethnoscientists to consider 'fair play' rather than 'objectivity' when attempting research in Northwest Amazonia. It is concluded that Amazonia and its indigenous population would gain much if each political actor (including scientists) would express their own subjectivity clearly and without hesitation.