Volume I of "An Illustrated Guide to the Wild Fruits from the
Amazon" depicts the fruits of all known Guianan plants covering
about 100 families, 546 genera, and over 2,000 species. Moreover,
the fruits of important edible-fruit producing families that occur
in the larger Brazilian Amazon are included. Furthermore, besides
the fruits of all Amazonian trees of the families Lecythidaceae and
Myristicaceae, all fruits that have been cultivated for food and/or
spread across the Amazon over the past 11,000 years by now extinct
Neolithic Amerindian hunter-gatherers and/or "terra preta"
anthrosol farming peoples, are depicted in color. The catalogue is
restricted to woody plants, i.e. trees and shrubs reaching over 1.5
m in height when full grown, lianas, vines, (hemi)-epiphytic
climbing shrubs, and (sub)-ligneous epiphytes. Among the
Chlamydospermae, only the family Gnetaceae is treated. The
remaining 98 families belong to the Angiospermae. Among the
Monocotyledoneae, the families Araceae, Musaceae/Strelitziaceae,
Liliaceae, and Arecaceae are included. The remaining 94 families
belong to the Dicotyledoneae. Volume II (in prep.) will treat over
100 plant families in alphabetical order. Each family is headed by
a short family description based mainly on the more practicable
field characters of leaves, inflorescences, flowers, and fruits.
The section Notes includes remarks on habit, secretory systems, and
seed dispersal - only when one may generalize on family level.
Following a family description, each genus within the family is
numbered and mentioned together with the author's name. A genus
description is given when more than one species within the genus
are described. Each genus is followed by the species in
alphabetical order and sub-numbered. This facilitates a quick
determination of both the number of genera treated within a certain
family and the number of species treated within a certain genus.
The species name is followed by the author's name according to
up-to-date taxonomic literature. When known to the author,
vernacular names used by the most prominent sections of the
population, such as Aruak-Amerindian (A), Caraib-Amerindian (C),
Surinamese Dutch (SD), Spanish (Sp.), English (E), Brazilian
Portuguese (B), Sranan-tongo or Surinamese (S), and
Bushland-Creole, Quilombola or Paramaccan (P), have been included.
When a fruit species is depicted in Volume I, plate and figure
numbers are given. Plates are numbered 1-208; figures are numbered
within each plate. The species descriptions as presented in Volume
II usually include four sections, the first word of each section
being printed in italics. The first section gives simple leaf
characters as far as they are practicable in the field. The second
section describes main characters of inflorescence, infructescence,
(fruiting) calyx, and/or pedicel. The third section describes
external and internal characters of fruit and seed(s). The fourth
section, "Notes," gives various remarks that may be useful in the
field, such as plant habit, presence of secretory systems, bark
features, seed dispersal strategy, phenology, occurrence, habitat
and soil type, and geographical distribution within the Guianas and
the larger Amazonian region. In Vol. I, I tried to include drawings
of as many fruits as possible. In case of great interspecific
resemblance, only one of the fruits has been depicted. Depending on
the available material, fruits and seeds are drawn from different
angles, cross and/or longitudinal sections, showing the
morphological properties that are most important for visual
identification. This Amazonian fruit catalogue includes too many
species to make a usable key down to genus or species level.
However, here I have included a synoptical key to the one-hundred
plant families treated. In order to facilitate direct
identification of the fruits, figures are drawn on a 1:1 scale.
Large fruits are reduced to about half their natural size.
General
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