Novedades del último mes en libros de Botánica

La influencia de las plantas desde el origen, en un día a día ya desparecido, nos ayuda a entender el pasado, a vivir el presente y a replantearnos el futuro.Raíz, hoja, tallo, flor y fruto, son considerados en la actualidad materia prima o decoracion. En un pasado cercano, eran partes esenciales de la vida cotidiana, con un protagonismo que borro la frontera entre el efecto demostrado y la creencia. Desde un enfoque del folclore etnobotanico, este herbario ilustrado recoge algunas de las plantas mas utilizadas en la peninsula iberica acercandonos a ese pasado e invitandonos a reflexionar sobre nuestro presente y el futuro.

The pinnacle of orchid hunting activity was in the nineteenth century when prices for individual plants reached astonishing levels Such were the profits to be made that many of the most active orchid hunters were directly employed by orchid nurseries in Britain and Europe These were not the aristocratic administrators of empire they were trained gardeners and horticulturalists who had a yearning to travel and see for themselves where the plants they nurtured had come from In this book we explore the activities of these orchid hunters through the years from the eighteenth century right into the twenty first century when the camera replaced the axe and spade Many of these stories are rarely told in the context of the society that demanded ever bigger and more flamboyant orchids Some were collected and the sites they had come from forgotten Some were so valuable that the sites were kept secret or misleading information given about their origin even the wrong country being suggested for some Orchid hunting was not always safe and some collectors never came home Of those that did return contemporary documents suggest that some of the stories they came back with enhanced the value of their plants but were not always entirely accurate in their details Using or