Sampling the green world

The rapid losses in phytodiversity in recent years have put an impetus on plant taxonomists to address the issues of collection, preservation, and storage of botanical materials for future use. Scientists are increasingly concerned that only 15 percent of plant and animal diversity has been catalogued to date. Samples collected in the next fifty years may well represent the last information on many plant species. Botanists now realize that methods of documentation have been haphazard at best. Even today, materials gathered in the field are seldom scientifically handled, and recently acquired specimens often lack the most elemental details of location, ecology, and plant features. A clear program to chart and conserve the estimated 250-400,000 species of flowering plants and ferns is desperately needed. In Sampling the Green World, twenty-one leading experts in systematic botany outline an intelligent plan for mapping phytodiversity in the next half century. Opening with an historical overview of the documentation of plant diversity and a consideration of societal and scientific needs from plant collections, the book suggests lessons for the future. The authors continue with a comprehensive look at the protocols and procedures for collecting, documenting, storing, and preserving specimens for such purposes as phylogenetic reconstructions and pharmaceutical research. They consider methods of retaining images of plants that cannot be sampled, surveying advanced computerized video applications including virtual reality. The book closes with a discussion of techniques for dealing with specimens that have already been collected, considering that many storage environments may need to be improved.