Batiri kei Baravi: the enthnobotany of Pacific Island Coastal plants

Abstract

Jonathan Sauer (1961) remarked, in his Coastal Plant Geography of Mauritius, that the chance to study the coastal vegetation there was like being "admitted to a field worker's paradise" and stressed that "most tropical coasts are beautiful and exciting, particularly to people concerned with natural processes . . .." The same can certainly be said for the tropical coasts of the often Edenized islands of the Pacific Ocean. Their "beauty and excitement" is considerably enhanced, however, when one is also "concerned" with cultural processes and ethnobotany, in particular, the immense cultural utility of coastal plants, a factor which strongly influences the distribution and character of plant communities.