Civil war, what civil war?

This is volume 2, part 2 of the ambitious reference work "Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea", originally called simply "Flora of Ethiopia". It's published in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Uppsala, Sweden. Funding has been provided by SAREC, better known as SIDA, the Swedish Third World aid agency. (Since SIDA means AIDS in French-speaking Africa, the Swedish agency called itself SAREC when working in African nations.) Inga Hedberg and Sue Edwards are listed as editors, together with Mesfin Tadesse.

Work on this project began already in 1980, and it has continued pretty much ever since. Interestingly, the flora was not affected by the regime change in Ethiopia in 1991, or by the independence of Eritrea the same year. The people on the editorial board remained the same, and so did the SIDA grants. Perhaps botanists are so non-political that neither side in the Ethiopian Civil War cared much? Or perhaps both sides needed aid money from Sweden...?

As already said, this is "volue 2, part 2" and covers 27 families from the Canellaceae to the Euphorbiaceae. The flora is illustrated, but only with black-and-white line drawings. It's obviously a reference work intended for botanists. Still, it's no mean accomplishment on its own turf, so I give it four stars despite the rather narrow target audience.