Green Inheritance: Saving the Plants of the World - Softcover

Huxley, Anthony; Smith, Katy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520243595 ISBN 13: 9780520243590

Publisher: University of California Press, 2006

Synopsis

Humans are entirely dependent on plants: we eat them, build with them, burn them for power, breathe the air they maintain, cure our ills with them. Yet, we are destroying this fundamental resource at a terrifying rate. This extensively revised and updated edition of Anthony Huxley’s magnificent global overview of our plant kingdom portrays the beauty, diversity, and history of wild and cultivated plants, highlighting their profound importance in our lives. With its beautiful color photographs, drawings, charts, diagrams, and superb text, Green Inheritance describes the role of plants in the global environment and across cultures; shows how plants are used for food, fuel, and medicine; considers their role for us as objects of beauty in gardens; and much more. Encyclopedic in scope and full of intriguing stories about many individual plants, this remarkable book emphasizes just how essential our green inheritance is to the future of humanity.

Huxley explores many topics that reflect a deepening concern about the threats to our plant heritage such as the slender genetic base of the world’s staple crops and the dwindling last locations of wild resources with unexplored potential. This new edition expands its coverage of current issues such as invasive plants, hotspots of plant diversity, herbal medicines, genetically modified crops, and sustainable timber harvesting. Writing with wisdom and vision, Huxley has created an invaluable resource for learning about the world’s plant life that underscores the importance and urgency of plant conservation.

About this title

About the Author

The late Anthony Huxley was author of Plant and Planet (1974) and thirty others books and field guides on flowers and horticulture. He was an editor at Amateur Gardening.

From Publishers Weekly

In this timely, comprehensive volume British botanist Huxley documents the remarkable contributions made by plants to world culture, the strains placed on these "green resources" today and the price we are paying for the loss of plant species and sustainable natural environments. Green Inheritance was first published in 1984 as part of a joint effort to focus attention on such issues by the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In this revised edition for the 1990s Huxley writes clearly and intelligently, without pretension or botanical jargon, and provides a perfect layman's introduction to difficult choices. Saving the plants that save us, as he puts it, involves more than setting aside reserves for rain forests and pandas; it requires grass-roots education and action, government leadership and international cooperation to preserve genetic diversity built up by centuries of natural selection and human breeding. The author profiles dozens of plants whose discovery and development significantly changed human life--essential staple crops that feed the world, exotic herbs and spices, crops for industrial uses, medicinal plants, ornamentals, curiosities. The bottom line is that all life on earth depends on plants; their current rate of destruction endangers life.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0520243595
• ISBN 13: 9780520243590
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192