ABSTRACT
Introduction Plant material has been collected from the wild for centuries by people from various tribes, races and civilizations for food and the preparation of folk medicines and poisons, whilst flowers have been picked for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. However, this chapter will deal only with plant collecting for scientific, horticultural and conservation reasons. The methods of collecting have changed over the last several hundred years, hence the greater bulk of the review pertains to the latter part of this century.
