A new ethnobotanical book “Popular Medicinal Plants in Portland and Kingston, Jamaica” authored by Dr David Picking, Research Fellow, Natural Products Institute (FST, UWI-Mona) and Dr Ina Vandebroek, Mathew Calbraith Perry Associate Curator of Economic Botany and Caribbean Program Director at The New York Botanical Garden has recently been launched. Originally printed locally and available as a community book, its content has been updated and peer reviewed. The book captures the expert knowledge of more than 100 people who use medicinal plants for healthcare in a rural and an urban community in Jamaica. Twenty five popular medicinal plant species are ranked according to their frequency of mention, and their medicinal uses categorized as “major” (mentioned by more than 20% of people in a community) or “minor” (mentioned by more than 5%, but less than 20% of people). Botanical identification is used for cross-linking of common and scientific plant names. The field research was supplemented by a comprehensive search and review of the ethnobotanical and biomedical literature. The book makes important new contributions to the understanding of patterns of medicinal plant knowledge, with new insights offered about which plants are used in consensus by local people for a variety of illnesses.

Popular Medicinal Plants in Portland and Kingston, Jamaica is published by Springer (2020) as number 19 in the series - Advances in Economic Botany (AEB). AEB was launched in 1984 by The New York Botanical Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany. It is an international publication forum covering traditional and local plant knowledge, the use and management of plants and their ecosystems, and the social-ecological dimensions of plant use.

For more on the book: https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030489267

For more on the Natural Products Institute at The UWI: https://www.mona.uwi.edu/npi/