Travel to Yemen

Flora of the Arabian Peninsula and Socotra, Vol. 1

Format: Hardcover
Author: Anthony G. Miller
ReleaseDate: September, 1996
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Rating:

It's like the Arabian Peninsula: Dry and Informative
It has information on every species that a botanist in this region of the world would want to study. Flora of the Arabian Peninsula and Socotra looks briefly at the geology and climate; then spends the vast majority of the book going through a taxonomic delineation, species by species of all plant life; and finally ends with maps indicating distribution of every species mentioned in the book.

But it is just really dry. Scholastic texts can be much more interesting, with better writing and more informative pictures. These pictures are black and whites drawings of parts of plants. The writing describes alternate leaves and lobes and how many sepals a plant has. Unless you have vast training in botany, you'll have no idea what the plant actually looks like. The Table of Contents listed by . . . and in the text is misleading- of 550 pages, only 30 deal with the topography and climate. Of those, the section on the History of Botanical Exploration is one paragraph; the section on Conservation is five- two of the more promising sections.

There are many interesting plants in this region. Qat is a mild stimulant considered a Class A drug in America, legal in Britain, and chewed by all Yemeni men and half of the Yemeni women for a few hours every day. You can't be Yemeni and not be involved with it. But there's no listing for it in the Index; presumably it's under it's scientific name. Suqutra is an amazing island, isolated for millions of years from the rest of the world and therefore exhibiting classic botanical gigantisism due to the absence of predators. (The correct name of the island is Suqutra; the authors of the text use the Western name, Socotra. ) It has umbrella trees, trees that look like giant carrots, and actual cucumber trees- trees that have become cucumbers. But without knowing the scientific names, you can't find them in this book. There is no listing of all species by area, so it is hard to find the Suqutri specimens. Once you do find them, the description is so dry you would know nothing of their magnificence. And the pictures show such small parts of the plants that you wouldn't be able to even recognize it as the wondrous organism it is.

The book is basically a missed opportunity. But it's a handy and encompassing text for someone within this specific field who's willing to pay for it. .

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