Economic Botany: Principles and Practices

538 Pages·2001·14.67 MB·English

by  Gerald E. Wickens (auth.)

Economic Botany: Principles and Practices
Economic Botany
Principles and Practices
by
GERALD E. WICKENS
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Economic botany : principles and praetiees / edited by Gerald E. Wickens.
p.em.
ISBN 978-1-4020-2228-9 ISBN 978-94-010-0969-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0969-0
1. Botany, Economic. 1. Wiekens, G. E.
SB107 .E26 2001
581.6--de21 00-066289
ISBN 978-1-4020-2228-9
Printed an acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001
No par! of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means. electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner.
Foreword
The strength of this book is that it is written by someone who has spent a lifetime devoted to the science of
economic botany. The author has brought together his vast experience in the field in Africa with his studies of
arid land plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The result is an informative and reliable text that covers a
vast range of topics. It is also firmly based upon the author's research and interest in plant taxonomy and
therefore fully acknowledges the importance of correct naming and classification in the field of science of
economic botany. The coverage is of economic botany in its broadest sense. I was delighted to find such topics
as ecophysiology, plant breeding, the environment and conservation are included in the text. This gives the book
a much more comprehensive coverage than most other texts on the subject. I was also glad to see that the book
covers the use of various organisms that are no longer considered part of the plant kingdom such as various
species of fungi and algae. It is indeed a broad ranging book that will be of use to many people interested in the
uses of plants and fungi.
Economic botany is once again being given more prominence as a discipline because of its enormous
relevance to both conservation and sustainable development. Those people involved in those topics shOUld find
this a most useful resource. The development of new sustainable agroforestry systems, and the search for new
plant products both depend upon a good knowledge of economic botany. I wish this text had been available at
the time I was setting up various new courses in economic botany.
Professor Sir Ghilean Prance, FRS, VMH
Formerly Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Contents
Acknowledgements Xl
Preface xiii
Chapter 1 Economic Botany
Chapter 2 Plant Collecting, Taxonomy and Nomenclature 17
Chapter 3 Environmental Considerations 43
Chapter 4 Plant Conservation 57
Chapter 5 Ecophysiology and Allied Disciplines 65
Chapter 6 Plant Breeding and Propagation 105
Chapter 7 Marketing of Crops and Crop Products 121
Chapter 8 Human and Animal Nutrition 127
Chapter 9 Human Food and Food Additives 151
Chapter 10 Feed for Livestock 209
Chapter 11 Food for Bees and other Desirable Invertebrates 223
Chapter 12 Timber and Wood Products 229
Chapter 13 Fuel 251
Chapter 14 Vegetable Fibres 263
Chapter 15 Phytochemicals 281
Chapter 16 Human and Veterinary Medicinal Plants 317
Vlll
Chapter 17 Plant Toxins and their Applications 333
Chapter 18 Useful Ferns, Bryophytes, Fungi, Bacteria and Viruses 347
Chapter 19 Useful Algae 373
Chapter 20 Environmental Uses 389
Chapter 21 Social Uses 403
Chapter 22 At the Start of the 21st Century 415
Bibliography 423
Taxonomic Index 459
Chemical Index 495
Subject Index 509
FIGURE
1. A reconstruction of the title page from Green (1816) showing the wide range of topics to be found in
his herbal. 3
TABLES
1. Areas of origin of cultivated plant diversity of staple food crops (original table prepared by Susannah
Brown and reproduced from Hoyt (1988) by kind permission of E. Hoyt 6
2. The nomenclatural history of Simmondsia chinensis 29
3. The Five Kingdoms classification of living organisms. The Protoctista are not fully represented here
(Hawskworth et al., 1995; Margulis and Schwartz, 1998; Bailey, 1999) 31
4. Families with C4 and CAM species (Raynal, 1973; Edwards and Walker, 1983; Clayton and
Renvoize,1986) 89
5. Nutritional classification of amino-acids (D'Mello, 1991, reproduced by kind permission of the Royal
Chemistry Society) 138
6. Global food production for 1993; staple foods in bold type (FAO, 1994) 153
7. Nutritional composition of Oryza saliva (paddy rice) and O. glaberrima (African rice) (Go hi, 1981;
National Research Council, 1996) 160
ix
8. Compa'rative nutritional values of the pseudocereals and cereals (Cole, 1979; Gobi, 1981; National
Research Council, 1989; Risi and Galwey, 1989; Jain and Sutamo, 1996) 173
9. Global production of raw materials and import! export of edible vegetable oils for 1992 (FAO, 1993a,
1994) 186
10. Examples of plant pigments used for food (Brouk, 1976; Lemmens et aI., 1991; Green, 1995) 198
11. Approximate service life in years based on decay resistance of heartwood in contact with the ground
in temperate and tropical regions (Chudnoff, 1979; Hart, 1991) 235
12. Dimensions and types of wood fibres (Eames and MacDaniels, 1947; Esau, 1953; Kirby, 1963;
McDougall et ai., 1993) 241
13. Pulping processes and their products (adapted from Bramwell, 1982) 242
14. Resin quality and yield characteristics rated from very good (+++) to poor (-) of some Pinus species
and the major producing countries. Countries in parentheses are relatively minor producers (after
Coppen and Hone, 1995) 245
15. Comparison of net calorific values of woods at different moisture contents (FAO, source unknown)
256
16. Global fibre production for 1993 (FAO, 1994) 264
17. Dimensions of individual vegetable fibres and their uses (Cross and Bevan, 1900; Kirby, 1963;
Shaltout, 1992; McDougall et ai., 1993; Jarman, 1998) 266
18. A selection of commercial gums and their applications (Brouk, 1976; Anderson, 1985; Sharp, 1990;
Robbins, 1995; Mabbedey, 1997) 282
19. Examples of the four classes of vegetable oils and their sources 296
20. Major commercial fatty acids from vegetable fats and oils (Princen, 1983; Appleqvist (1989); MAFF,
1994a) 297
21. Examples of characteristic fatty acids and their use and potential use (compiled from Rexen and
Munck, 1984; MAFF, 1994a; Mabbedey, 1997) 298
22. Examples of plant starch grains and their characteristics and uses (Doggett, 1970; Gohl, 1981; Rexen
and Munck, 1984; Snyder, 1984; Pursegiove, 1985, 1987; Ensminger et al., 1994; Flach and
Rumawas.1996) 307
x
23. Commercial uses of some alkaloids (Petterson et ai., 1991, reproduced by kind permission of the Royal
Society of Chemistry; Ifide Skorupa and Assis, 1998) 314
24. Plant toxins used as arrow poisons (Cotton, 1995, reproduced by kind permission of John Wiley &
Sons) 336
25. Plant toxins used as fish poisons (Cotton, 1996, reproduced by kind permission of John Wiley
&&~ ill
26. Bioherbicides (Subba Rao and Kauskik, 1989; Watson, 1989; Holliday, 1990) 343
27. Classification of disease resistance factors in higher plants (Harborne, 1988) 346
28. Desirable characteristics of plants used for windbreaks/shelterbelts, stock-proof and garden hedges
(after Henderson, 1987) 391
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the help given by colleagues at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, especially
Frances E.M. Cook, also Dr A. Abu-Rabia (Beer-Sheva), Professor L. Boulos (Cairo), P.W. Coward (The Hill
Bmsh Company), Professor M.N. El Hadidi (Cairo University), Dr H.N. Le Houerou (Montpellier), Dr S.R.
King (Shaman Pharmaceuticals), P. Scott (National Trust); also for the library facilities provided by FAO
(Rome), Institute of Food Research (NOlWich), John Innes Centre (Norwich), Linnean Society (London),
Norfolk County Library (Aylsham Branch), Welcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London) and to
Plant Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and Plant Health, Forestry Commission; I am
particularly grateful to Professor E.A. Bell, Bill Howard and Dr Peter Lapinskas for their critical reading of
parts of the text.
I also wish to thank the following for permission to cite material: Market House Books Ltd. (Penguin
Dictionary of Botany ©1984), Reader's Digest Assoc. Ltd. (Reader's Digest Universal Dictionary © 1986),
John Wiley & Sons Ltd (Cotton. C.M. Ethnobotany Principles and Applications © 1996), Royal Society of
Chemistry (D'Mello • .T.P.F .• Duffus, C.M. and Duffus, J.H. (eds.) Toxic Substances in Crop Plants ©1991), F.
Rexen. F. (Rexen, F. and Munck, Cereal Crops for Industrial Use in Europe ©1984), FAO (FAD Production
Year Book 1993, vol. 47 and Non-Wood Forest Products no.2: Gum naval stores ©1995, IDRC. Ottawa (The
Cmcible Group, People, Plants and Patents ©1994) Ericht Hoyt (Hoyt, E., Conserving the World Relatives of
Crops ©1988), Addison, Wesley, Longman (Penguin Dictionary of Chemistry, 2nd edn. © 1990).
Finally, I am indebted to Amo Flier and Angela Timmennan of Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
for their forbearance with my incompetence in the preparation of camera-ready copy.
Preface
As a background to the rationale for this book, these ramblings of a retired economic botanist are intended
to explain my attitude to the many facets of economic botany. I first became interested in the use of plants
following a chance visit as a 14 year-old schoolboy to London's Imperial Institute, alas no more, having long
been replaced by the College of Science and Technology. At that age I was not impressed by the serried rows of
bottles on display in the Museums at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, just across the river from where I went to
school. A regular Saturday visitor to the Imperial Institute, I became hooked by the marvellous displays of
dioramas and artefacts and resolved to become a tropical agriculturist. As I have tried to explain in Wickens
(1990), economic botany in the United Kingdom was then equated with tropical agriculture and the Empire.
Consequently I read agriculture and botany at Aberystwyth, the latter a subject that my grammar school
education had failed to provide. In those halcyon years DNA, computers, rock-and-roll and top of the pops were
still unknown
However, by 1952, when I first arrived in Africa, it was a generation too late for 'economic botany' to
make a meaningful contribution to agriculture as the colonies were already in the process of being handed back
to their indigenous inhabitants. Nevertheless, I learnt much through observation and inquiry as I practised my
various trades in agriculture, soil and water conservation, ecology, land use, ctc. in what were then known as
Northern Nigeria, Northern and Southern Rhodesia and the Sudan. Living in a country teaches one more about
the significance of plants in the lives of people than it is possible to learn through expeditions. An allergy to
tropical grasses hastened my unwilling return to my horne country where I was fortunate enough to obtain
employment as a taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and later to be placed in charge of the Survey
of Economic Plants of Arid and Semi-Arid Tropics, thereby leading to my inheritance and belated appreciation
of those much despised bottles of my youth! The what, how and why some plants are used continues to fascinate
me in my retirement. I can only hope that others will be equally fascinated.
In planning this book I have tried to take account of what I now know and, with hindsight, what I shOUld
have known. My academic education was based on broad principles, while in the latter half of the 20th century
education has tended to be more job specific. Economic botany too has changed from and understanding of the
biology, culture and utilisation of plants and plant products to a more detailed understanding of the chemistry
and genetics involved. For example, during the pa.t 50 years there have been enormous advances in