Enduring seeds

Plant varieties are disappearing from the world's fields and wild landscapes, and this loss draws far less public attention than the decline of wildlife, though its consequences may be just as serious. Gary Paul Nabhan, an ethnobotanist working in the American Southwest, examines how the disappearance of native vegetation threatens the variety of plant life that people depend on.

The book also looks back to the farming methods that Indigenous peoples developed across the Americas. Nabhan describes how these traditional practices kept a wide range of crops and wild plants in use, offering lessons about sustaining plant diversity.