Popular Botany Books to be Published in Cuba

Santiago de Cuba, Sep 1. -Three popular books on botany will be published soon in Cuba, author Manuel Garcia Caluff, who is also the director of the Fern Garden in this city, told Prensa Latina.The expert said that the texts include La Magia de mi Jardin (My Garden's Magic), full of anecdotes and mainly aimed at young people, and El Cultivo de los Helechos (Fern Cultivation), a manual with basic knowledge about these plants, their harvest, maintenance and reproduction.

Those volumes are in being printed at Editorial Oriente (Oriente publishing house), and the third, Conservacion de los Licofitos y Helechos en Las Antillas (Conservation of Lycophytes and Ferns in the Caribbean) is ready to be launched in the Dominican Republic, sponsored by the Botanical Garden in that country.

As a result of his nearly 40 years heading the Fern Garden in Santiago de Cuba, in eastern Cuba, Garcia Caluff has a library specializing in Pteridophytes, with more than 150 books and some 400 magazines, along with on-line information on the topic.

Other scientific contributions have been the description and publication of a new species of fern, the Cyathidaria Caluff &Shelton, and of 24 new taxa for science, the types of which are in the garden's herbarium.

Caluff, who also heads the National Group of Popular Gardening, promotes environmental education and is advisor of the botanical garden network in Cuba, with an emphasis on fern collections. (Prensa Latina)