Ethnomedicinal Plants: A Biodiversity Treasure

At first fleeting look, “Ethnomedicinal Plants: A Biodiversity Treasure” appears to be a medical compendium of plants intended as a guide and reference resource for professionals in the field. Anyone who picks up this book, it contains nuggets of information that would interest a great many readers, from school children to teachers, from undergraduates to researchers, from homemakers to business people and of course, the healthcare professionals. The aim of this book was to review the current status of ethnomedicinal plants research in light of the surge in the demand for herbal medicine. A great deal of information about the traditional uses of plants is still intact with tribal peoples. This book focuses on the ethnobotanical survey and ethnopharmacology of medicinal plants as a whole. The primary intention in writing such a book is to attract graduate students and spur their interests in medicinal plant research. As a result of teaching many undergraduate and graduate students about plant natural products in a wide range of plant biology courses, the need for a comprehensive yet thorough collection of information on what kinds of natural products plants produce, including why they produce them, became very apparent. The strength of this book are, the topics were carefully selected and user friendly for the serious reader or researcher. This book has added more to the existing discoveries of the relevance of plants and its usefulness in various ailments. Hope, this book will give impetus to the conservation of ethnopharmacologically useful plants.