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This field guide of the wildflowers in the Azores islands provides short species portraits with full- colour photographs for 645 vascular plants growing wild in the archipelago and mentions key distinguishing characters for the remaining species. More than 1100 of the about 1200 species of the flora of the Azores are covered in this book, the most comprehensive treatment for these islands. Not only the most common species but also rare and unusual plants of thrilling beauty are illustrated and described, some of them for the first time.

Much emphasis is given to endemic species that can be found nowhere else in the world and invasive plant species that have been introduced to the Azores from all over the globe. They describe a serious threat to the native ecosystems in the archipelago. In addition to the scientific name, the Portuguese, English, German, and French names are given for each species. A glossary in English, Portuguese and German helps readers to better understand the scientific terminology.

An invaluable aid for all plant lovers in the Azores: students, teachers, farmers, rangers, scientists, tourists.

Die neue, große und umfassende Flora der Kanarischen Inseln

Im vorliegenden Werk werden auf 1.300 Seiten über 2.000 Farn- und Blütenpflanzen der Kanarischen Inseln in Wort und Bild dargestellt. Fast alle der etwa 650 endemischen Sippen werden mit einem oder mehreren Fotos abgebildet. Hinzu kommen zahlreiche, meist mediterrane, eingebürgerte und invasive Arten.

Über 2.400 Farbfotos, darunter zahlreiche Detailaufnahmen, 

ermöglichen eine sichere Bestimmung der auf den Kanaren vorkommenden Arten. Im Text finden sich außerdem Angaben zu 200 weiteren Arten, wie man sie unterscheidet und auf welchen Inseln sie vorkommen.

Im einleitenden Teil werden die einzelnen Vegetationsstufen beschrieben, des Weiteren die Inseln und ihre Entstehung und die Entwicklung der Flora.

Dieses Buch ist eine unverzichtbare Ergänzung zu den bisher vorliegenden Bestimmungsbüchern. Unentbehrlich ist es für alle Pflanzenliebhaber der Kanaren: für Botaniker, Studenten, Lehrer als auch für Touristen.

Here you will find a free excerpt of the book!

Ornamental Plants of Malta is a result of one of his research projects dealing with the Flora of the Maltese Islands. In this book almost all the ornamental plants cultivated in public places in Malta (approximately 450 species), are included. Descriptions of the ornamental plants are complemented by about 600 full-colour photographs, with notes on the flowering time, place of origin and occurrence in Malta, and remarks (e.g. about cultivation details) are included to provide the reader with useful background about certain plants.
An invaluable aid for plant lovers, gardeners, students, and teachers, scientists and tourists, and all those interested in learning more about the variety of ornamental plants to be found in Malta and the Mediterranean region.

In this field guide to the wildflowers of the Maltese Islands more than 600 of the approximately 1000 species of vascular plants found in Malta, are considered, not only the most prevalent species but also rare ones, introduced or indigenous, as well as most of the endemic species that grow nowhere else in the world. The guide provides short descriptions complemented by about 630 full-colour photographs, with notes about the flowering time, place of origin, occurrence and distribution in the Maltese Islands. An invaluable aid for all plant lovers interested in Malta, especially students and teachers, or scientists and tourists from all over the world.

At the risk of outing myself as an ‘obsolete relic’, I have to come clean and recount my own introduction to the ‘vasculum or botanical collecting box’. In the 1960s my family lived in Leeds and on coming home for lunch from school one day with my brother and sister, we found an unexpected parcel addressed to us. I must have been seven or eight at the time. The packet came from the firm of Reynolds and Branson, suppliers of laboratory and photographic equipment, and had been sent at the request of our great aunt May Padman. Aunt May was a keen botanist and lived in the beautiful village of Boston Spa, on the spe- cies-rich Magnesian limestone rather than the species-poor, acidic Millstone grit around Leeds. On opening the package we found a strange, bright green, metal box, which our Mother told us was a ‘vasculum’. Though no longer able to undertake fieldwork herself, having been immobilised by a stroke, Aunt May wanted to encourage our early botanical pursuits, as she had done with her niece Ann Woolliscroft while collecting belladonna and foxglove for the war effort during World War II. Curiously, according to Mother, Aunt May never used a vasculum and for us children it came too late. Technology had moved on and this was now the era of collecting into polythene bags, but I still have the box as a memento of times past. On seeing the French version of this remarkable book in 2022 my immediate reaction was that it needed to be made available to a much wider audience, to readers of English, but also for its remarkable illustrations. These show not only the historical development of the vasculum itself, but a quite extraordinary range of images, from illustrations in catalogues of suppliers of scientific equipment, to vivid ‘chromos’ advertising some rather surprising products. Many of the latter are from the author’s own collection, assembled over a period of many years. The other major reason for wanting to make the book more widely available is that it hugely extends the pioneering, but largely Anglocentric, work on the subject by David Allen and members of the Botanical Society of the British Isles.

Smallholder agricultural markets in the majority of Sub-Saharan Africa are liberalized to enhance market linkages and efficiency. However, the result of the private sector response has been disappointing, especially in areas with constrained market infrastructure. Coordination problems and high transaction costs have considerably constrained market functioning. To reduce these costs, new institutional innovations such as the strengthening of collective marketing groups to improve the performance of rural contractual arrangements would be required. This could be the rationale behind similar institutional innovations in Camel milk enterprise in Kenya where contractual arrangements are married with collective action at market intermediation to rival individual trade relationships. However, the mere presence of these innovations may not automatically assure that those trade relationships are efficient. This could be true for the camel milk trade where farmers continue to face relatively high trans- action costs that denies them the opportunity to tap the gains from the growing demand in the local and international market despite such interventions. This book seeks to establish the appropriateness of a higher degree of coordination in economizing transaction costs with a focus on how the alternative institutional arrangements in camel milk marketing compare based on transaction cost and the extent to which variation in these arrangements can be explained by product characteristics, market requirements, and the market structure. The focus is also on the scope for improvements and the parties and cost attributes necessary to make the institutional arrangements feasible as transaction cost reduction mechanism. The analytical framework is based on the transaction cost approach combined with a modelling assessment for simulation of organization forms under the existing market conditions. The book identifies transport and information costs as important transactions and marketing costs that influence milk transactions through the trader cooperative. The evidence of presence of increasing returns to scale is detected indicating the scope for efficiency improvement. Milk allocation and revenues from trade can therefore be significantly increased by enhancing the efficiency of the existing collective efforts among camel milk traders. However, such transaction costs reduction interventions at the farmer level would not however achieve any meaningful improvement in volume transacted through trader cooperatives and incomes unless accompanied by an improved procurement price. This calls for support for agricultural market information, improvement of road infrastructure and streamlining storage and transportation.<

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