Medicinal plant conservation bibliography, volume 1

Books and papers on medicinal plants number tens of thousands worldwide. The bulk of them relate to pharmacology and medicinal properties or to classical ethnobotanical research. Regrettably, information on distribution, life history, biology, population status, levels of extraction and trade, or resource management of the taxa is scarce. Information urgently needed for setting plant conservation priorities is rare and scattered. The bibliography is designed to collect this information from the scattered sources. It systematically reviews about 60 journals for papers with relation to medicinal plant conservation issues. A number of members of the IUCN/SSC Medicinal Plant Specialist Group have contributed literature references to this volume. This first volume includes some 774 references mainly of the years 1990-1996 published in monographs, journals, serial publications, and grey literature. For most 1996 papers, short reviews with a summary of the contents have been drafted. The references are indexed by three types of descriptors: general keywords (e.g. trade volumes, market analysis, ethnobotany, export, population status), country references and taxa references.