This aesthetically unique book combines ecological, morphological and anatomical, as well as phylogenetic studies on plant material in a largely unexplored dry mountain region above the timberline. It offers the first comparative analysis of hundreds of plants - annuals, perennial herbs and dwarf shrubs - in an area of 87,000 km2 at altitudes from 2600 to 6150 m above sea level in the Western Himalaya. Characteristic landscape pictures of all major vegetation types and maps show at which locations and altitudes the individual species of vascular plants are distributed, while macroscopic plant pictures and plant age are related to high-quality micro-sections and micro-photographs. The anatomical features of 345 dicotyledons were characterized using the published coding systems and those of 155 monocotyledones were characterized on the basis of a newly developed key. The number of annual rings and anatomical features of the xylem and phloem of dicots are compared and related to different ecological conditions within this extremely dry and cold environment. The ecological and anatomical characterization is used to create a phylogenetic tree based on nucleotide sequences, and indicates which features are genetically stable and which ones are modified by environmental factors. The book appeals to scientists in the fields of plant taxonomy, morphology, anatomy and ecology.

This life is the outcome of author's field studies and provides scientific information on 111 selected medicinal plants occurring in Kashmir and Ladakh. A chapter on traditional knowledge on healing properties of plants giving ethno-medical uses of 291 plants is included.

This is the first book to provide comprehensive information on the anatomy and ecology of arctic and alpine plants from cold sites around the globe, including representative species from Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Himalaya, Japan, Argentina, Ecuador and Western USA. It presents the study sites, including characteristic landscape and vegetation photographs. It also discusses species distribution, habitat preferences and features plant pictures, particularly focusing on the specific stem anatomical features, which differ in many cases from temperate zone herbs. Furthermore, each plant is characterized according to a newly constructed codification system. Based on the first author’s 20-years of field research, a close collaboration with numerous botanical gardens, and the vast ecological experience of the other authors, the book presents approximately 350 species. The general layout is comparable to Doležal et al’s 2018 book Anatomy, Age and Ecology of High Mountain Plants in Ladakh, the Western Himalaya.

Research in recent years has increasingly shifted away from purely academic research, and into applied aspects of the discipline, including climate change research, conservation, and sustainable development. It has by now widely been recognized that “traditional” knowledge is always in flux and adapting to a quickly changing environment. Trends of globalization, especially the globalization of plant markets, have greatly influenced how plant resources are managed nowadays. While ethnobotanical studies are now available from many regions of the world, no comprehensive encyclopedic series focusing on the worlds mountain regions is available in the market. Scholars in plant sciences worldwide will be interested in this website and its dynamic content. The field (and thus the market) of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology has grown considerably in recent years. Student interest is on the rise, attendance at professional conferences has grown steadily, and the number of professionals calling themselves ethnobotanists has increased significantly (the various societies, like the Society for Economic Botany, the International Society of Ethnopharmacology, the Society of Ethnobiology, and the International Society for Ethnobiology currently have thousands of members). Growth has been most robust in BRIC countries. This new MRW on Ethnobotany of the Himalayas takes advantage of the increasing international interest and scholarship in the field of mountain research. It includes the best and latest research on a full range of descriptive, methodological, theoretical, and applied research on the most important plants in the Himalayas. Each contribution is scientifically rigorous and contributes to the overall field of study.