Plant Talk, a quarterly journal
Diane Whitehead (Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:26:40 PST)

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