Most used sources for these documents
An important source of information is PROSEA, a collection of 24 books in 19
volumes with information on South East Asian plants.
See
PROSEA.
These books are very useful and I consult them very often.
But books on the shelf are getting older and the content will
stay the same.
On internet with tools as search engines like
Google and the growing database of
Wikipedia and many
other sites it is possible to gather newer information over plants, their names and use.
Plant names
The scientific plant names and classifications are changing fast as more information on
relationships between plants are known.
If possible I check the current names in recent volumes of the
Flora of Thailand and
internet.
I try to reduce the numbers of synonyms to 2 only or none.
The Thai plant names are mostly based on
ชื่อพรรณไมแห่งประเทศไทย เตม สมิตินันทน์ -2544 (Thai Plant Names [by] Tem S[a]mitinand)
Revised edition 2001 by The Forest Herbarium Royal Forest Department, Bangkok
This book enumerates the scientific names and has often several
Thai names for one species. One of them is in bold face. If the
species is in this names list then first name is always the bold
printed name for this plant.
Some times you see a second name. The second name is the name used by the
Thai staff in the garden. Very often this one of the other names
for this species mentioned in
Thai Plant Names or available in
other Thai plant books or web sites.
See also the
index to the plant family names,
or take a look at the Thai
Forest Herbarium News side.
Accepting a Thai name as the "true" name give can be problematic. If the plant
starts flowering it is sometimes a completely different species then
the expected one. An other problem is that people can give a Thai
name for a plant, but the name can not be linked to any scientific plant name at all.
Internet and spices
Here below you can find a link to the best web site about spices I know on internet.
The document by
Gernot Katzer is available on the university of Graz in Austria.
You can find information on ethno pharmacological use, chemistry and even recipes for cooking.
The names of spices are written in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Thai etc. script.
This is the link to his
English index of spice names.