The Uses of Plants
A Manual of Economic Botany with Special Reference to Vegetable Products Introduced during the Last Fifty Years
Cambridge Library Collection - Botany and Horticulture Series

An eminent botanist and natural historian, George Simonds Boulger (1853?1922) wrote a number of books on plant life in the British Isles. He published this concise work in 1889. It opens with a brief survey of the progress made in economic botany over the years, particularly in the period 1837?87. Boulger then notes the commercial application of plants across many fields, notably food production, medicine, and the building trade. Common and botanical names are given, followed by succinct descriptions of each plant. Including both a general and synoptical index, this accessible resource can be read with profit alongside John Jackson's Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth Century (1890) and Boulger's Wood: A Manual of the Natural History and Industrial Applications of the Timbers of Commerce (1902), both of which are reissued in this series.

Introduction; 1. Food, food-stuffs, and food-adjuncts; 2. Materia medica; 3. Oils and oil-seeds, etc.; 4. Gums, resins, etc.; 5. Dyes and tanning materials; 6. Fibres and paper materials; 7. Timber and other woods; 8. Agricultural plants; 9. Miscellaneous products; Systematic synoptic index; General index.