Jane's mention of the difficulty of buying foreign language plant books led me to a Google search, and I have just spent way more time than I expected reading book reviews. It is amazing how many books there are about chiles, the capsicums, or written by several people with the surname Chiles, all of which have to be waded through to find books about Chile, the country. What I did discover, to my surprise, is a plant journal I have never heard of before. It is Plant Talk, published by The National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii. http://www.plant-talk.org/index.html It doesn't write only about tropical plants. Here are a few articles in the newest quarterly issue: Yunnan: Ethnobotany in the service of conservation. Martin Walters and Hu Huabin describe the flora and vegetation of Yunnan, this most diverse province of China, and how the work of a new generation of Chinese ethnobotanists has helped guide government policy towards the environment, especially through respecting the traditions of local people and their balance with natural resources. One fascinating aspect is the number of plant-rich areas protected as sacred sites, whether as holy hills, temple gardens or cemetery forests. Planning for plants. Elizabeth Farnsworth, Senior Research Ecologist at the New England Wild Flower Society, outlines a recent project of the Society to prepare detailed conservation plans for over 100 rare plant taxa Small is beautiful; Bryophyte conservation in Britain and north-west Europe, by Jenny Duckworth. A nature reserve with a difference opened in September at Wakehurst Place A Transylvanian wood-pasture. John Akeroyd admires a magnificent example of wood pasture, a notable stand of "old oak forest" in Sighisoara in Romania. Diane Whitehead