Vavilov’s travels through the Pamirs and Western China made great use of the oases of the Silk Road. If you would like to know more about the two-way traffic along this vibrant network of trade routes, you might want to listen to The Silk Road, a programme from BBC Radio 4 in the series In Our Time. [1] Not a huge amount of plant diversity in there — although rhubarb gets a brief mention — but much else of interest.
Notes:- I’m not sure how long that link will last; if you have trouble, let me, or the BBC, know. [↩]
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
There’s also an exhibition on in New York at the American Museum of Natural History: http://agro.biodiver.se/2009/11/silk-road-on-show-in-new-york/.