Orchids and Their Conservation - Hardcover

Koopowitz, Harold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0881925233 ISBN 13: 9780881925234

Publisher: Timber Press, 2001

Synopsis

Expert, up-to-date information on orchid biology, ecology, distribution, destruction, and conservation of these threatened treasures of the plant kingdom.

About this title

About the Author

Harold Koopowitz is Professor of Ecology at the University of California at Irvine. Previously, he was the Director of the University of California at Irvine Arboretum for twenty years when it specialized in African bulbous and cormous plants. Koopowitz has long-standing interests in the hybridization of a variety of specialist plants, including slipper orchids, daffodils, and clivias. He has traveled extensively to study orchids in the wild, and is diligent in his efforts to encourage discussion about endangered plants. The results of his devotion include numerous scientific papers on orchids, deforestation, and the effects of long conversion on plant extinctions. He is a long-standing member of the conservation committee of the American Orchid Society and a member of the Orchid Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission. Koopowitz is the author of several books on horticulture and conservation, including Orchids and Their Conservation, and is currently editor-in-chief for the Orchid Digest. He resides in Santa Ana, California.

Reviews

The insatiable demand for exotic new species of the charismatic and horticulturally desirable orchid has resulted in its overcollection and endangerment in natural habitats. Koopowitz (Univ. of California, Irvine), a leading orchid horticulturist and conservation biologist and also associate editor of Orchid Digest, seeks to educate orchid growers, as well as the general public, on the need to protect orchid species. The first part of this book includes a comprehensive overview of orchid botany, ecology, and ethnobotany perhaps the most thorough treatment of this particular topic in orchid literature. The remainder is devoted to specific strategies for conserving orchids, with an emphasis on ex situ methods (e.g., commercial propagation and cultivation in private and public collections). Updating H.W. Pritchard's Modern Methods of Orchid Conservation (1990), this volume is highly recommended for public and academic libraries and is a requisite for all horticultural libraries. Brian Lym, City Coll. of San Francisco Lib.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Imagine a world where an elegant Phalaenopsis orchid no longer graces a classic floral arrangement or where a lavish Dendrobium ceases to be the quintessential corsage. Koopowitz, an editor for Orchid Digest and a prolific publisher of scientific papers on orchids and plant extinction, has; and his outrage over the present loss and potential extinction of these rare and luxuriant tropical beauties is palpably passionate yet professorially pragmatic. Compiling current thinking on such diverse topics as orchid destruction and conservation, Koopowitz has produced the definitive treatise on the ecology of this, the largest family of flowering plants. Mired in both lore and legend, orchids owe their current endangered state less to overzealous harvesting than to tropical deforestation and a worldwide overreliance on chemical insecticides that threaten plant pollinators. Koopowitz encourages readers to understand orchids and their ecological role in the hope that such knowledge will encourage support of urgent conservation efforts. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Timber Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0881925233
• ISBN 13: 9780881925234
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 177