Advances in Ethnobotany

Like his primate relatives, Man was also originated and grown up in natural surroundings. From other animals he was different only with his better intelligence and that has created the havoc. Using his intelligence he was able to select better edible plants, better hunting equipments, improving the comfort in natural shelters like caves and was also trying to recognise the properties of different plants to get relief from the physical discomforts they were experiencing.  Man has migrated almost in all the corners of this planet and in each of such settlements he was interacting with the local environment, identifying and learning the uses of local biological elements. In this process he accumulated a huge bulk of traditional knowledge only a microscopic fraction of which is now used in the civilized society and the unused bulk contains much useful information. Extension of the facilities of modern civilisation and the destruction of natural habitat for biodiversity elements changing the life style of traditional people and they are loosing their hard earned knowledge very fast. This has forced the development of the subject Ethnobotany and today everybody realise the importance of practicing this younger branch of science. The book, Advances in Ethnobotany is the collection of 34 articles those were presented at the XIII Annual Conference of Indian Association of Angiosperm Taxonomy (IAAT) and International Symposium on Plant Taxonomy: Advances and Relevance held at the University Department of Botany, TM Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur (November 14-15, 2003). The book will cater to the needs of students, research scholars, teachers and others interested in the field of Ethnobotany.