World Economic Plants (PDF)

John H. Wiersema, Ph.D., has worked to develop an extensive and exhaustive taxonomic resource on economic plants, especially those important to global agriculture, for nearly 30 years. This activity has been carried out as the curator of taxonomic data for the USDA's national germplasm system's GRIN database. Through this work, Dr. Wiersema has gained global standing as a specialist in plant nomenclature, and now has direct editorial involvement with both the botanical and cultivated plant codes of international nomenclature and the international nomenclature journal Taxon. Dr. Wiersema is also well known as a specialist on the taxonomy of the water-lily family, and is responsible for the discovery and description of several new species and over 30 scientific publications on the group.

Blanca Leon, Ph.D., is a plant taxonomist by training. She worked with John H. Wiersema from 1994 to 2000 with the USDA GRIN database and later joined the GRIN taxonomy team to work on projects related to the goals of the USDA's national germplasm system. She is currently involved in developing with Dr. Wiersema a detailed overview of crop relatives. Dr. Len has extensive field work experience in tropical Andean South America. These experiences are manifested in her work both for projects like this book and also for her undertaking of the evaluation of the conservation status of endemism in a tropical country. Her research also deals with fern taxonomy, mainly of Neotropical Polypodiaceae, and with the biogeography of fern taxa. She has over 60 publications in different botanical journals.