flora of china - Nagaland email
Anthony R. Brach (brach@oeb.harvard.edu)
Thu, 08 May 1997 12:10:25 -0700
>
>I have just viewed the Flora of China on the net.
>We are grateful.
>I take this opportunity to introduce myself.
>
>I am chairman of a project on agroforestry in Nagaland (India) with the title
>"Nagaland Environment Protection and Economic Development Through People's
>Action" - NEPED in short.
>
>The main activity in the project is to plant locally stabilised tree species
>in the slash and burn fields. We have a menu of about 50 tree species from
>which the farmers are free to choose. It has been built up by relying on
>peoples' time tested knowledge of their flora. Thus the menu is an evolving
>one and project personnel are continuously recording what people show them.
>To quickly get to the botanical name of what one brings back from the field,
>we have developed a simple database with data relating to the structure of
>about 5000 species of dicots, culled from old flora of the Indian
>Subcontinent, which includes Myanmar. However, many of these species have
>very scanty data and we are in search of structural data on species. Our
>database is just a two way dictionary, in which we enter observed
>characteristics of a specimen and the computer gives up a list of species
>for which the already entered data match those of the specimen. So far, in
>the last couple of years, with our "search" file, we have been able to go up
>to the generic names of about 80 percent of the specimens.
>
>In addition we are also developing a photo library. Presently we have some
>good pictures of species existing in Nagaland.
>
>Can we not request use of data from the manuscripts on species in the Flora
>of China or even elsewhere ?
>
>Looking forward to your response,
>
>Regards
>
>
*************************************************************
Anthony R. Brach, Ph.D.
http://www.herbaria.harvard.edu/~brach/