A new book covering 10,000 of the world’s economically important plants greatly expands upon an out-of-date, out-of-print reference long popular with botanists, other scientists, teachers, and others.

The new 784-page volume is World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference. It stems from Agricultural Handbook 505, published in 1977 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and revised in 1986.

Two scientists with the Agricultural Research Service, USDA’s principal scientific agency, wrote the new book. It provides information required by scientists and others who study, identify or classify crop plants, weeds, poisonous plants and other plants of economic importance, including those with medicinal and industrial potential.

World Economic Plants was published under a cooperative research and development agreement between ARS and CRC Press of Boca Raton, Fla. The earlier book was A Checklist of Names for 3,000 Vascular Plants of Economic Importance