Ethnobotany Old and New

Ginseng root – Panax pseudoginseng

Foxglove –Digitalis purpurea

• Foxglove may be useful as a way to cure people of “grosse and slimie flegme and naughtie humors” – from Gerard’s Herbal - 1597

Foxglove

William Withering- holding a foxglove

Withering’s work on Foxglove• Began experiments with foxglove in 1775 -

Withering had heard about an old family cure for dropsy

• 156 tests conducted over 9 years• Reported his findings in a paper published in 1785,

“An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses”

• Powdered foxglove leaf is still prescribed in tablets or capsules to treat congestive heart failure

• The somewhat crude powdered drug is called Digitalis after the plant

• Foxglove produces more than 30 different cardiac glycosides - two in particular - Digoxin and Digitoxin are produced from foxglove and prescribed to heart patients around the world today

Digitalis medicine

Linneaus in Sami clothing

Polytrichum moss – used as bedding

Pinguicula – insectivorous plant, enzyme used to curdle milk

Linneaus pioneered techniques that are basic

to ethnobotanists practicing today

1. He traveled alone or with only a few companions to distant lands with a minimum of gear

2. In the field Linneaus ate indigenous foods and learned to use plants as the indigenous people used them

3. Linneaus developed a deep rapport with the people he lived with and studied

After Linneaus – great age of botanical exploration

• Linneaus’s students

• Peter Kalm explored North America

• Frederick Hasselquist – the Middle East

• Pehr Osbeck – China

• Daniel Solander – around the world with Captain Cook

Other botanical explorers

• Alexander van Humboldt – the Amazon• Aime Bonpland – Mexico, Columbia, Orinoco and

Amazon Rivers, Paraguay, Argentina• Alfred Russell Wallace – 4 years in Amazonia, 8

years in Malay Archipelago• Joseph Hooker – Ceylon, Himalayas, Antarctica,

Palestine, Morocco, directed Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

• Richard Spruce – 17 years Amazon and Andes

von Humboldt and Bonpland

Hooker and Spruce

Richard Schultes, Kiowa Roadman Belo Kozad, and Weston La Barre

– 1936, Oklahoma

Lophophora williamsii – peyote cactus

Richard Schultes – Amazonia, late 1940’s

Tagetes lucida – Mexican hallucinogenic marigold

Two Great Challenges for Ethnobotanists Today

1. We still must catalog what is known about plants, document which plants are and are not important to a society, and record the vast amount of folk beliefs about different plant species.

Two Great Challenges for Ethnobotanists Today

2. An even more difficult task is to understand not just how a particular group uses plants but how that group perceives plants, how it interprets those perceptions, how those perceptions influence the behavior of that society, and how those activities and behaviors influence the plants and ecosystem upon which the society depends.

Ethnobotanical Methods

Researchers and Informants in Bolivia

William Witheringand foxglove as a modern medicine

Basic Working Method in Ethnobotany

1) Folk knowledge of a plant’s possible benefit to humans accumulates.

2) Indigenous people use that plant to benefit themselves 3) The folk knowledge is then related to a scientist 4) The scientist collects and identifies the plant 5) The scientist tests the plant to determine if it really is

beneficial to humans. The form of the scientific test can vary significantly depending upon the potential use of the plant – whether as food, fiber, a dye, medicine, etc.

6) The scientist will attempt to determine what exactly makes the plant beneficial - what substance or aspect of the plant is beneficial.

7) The scientist determines the structure of the pure substance

Rhubarb – Rheum x. cultorumEdible stems, deadly toxic leaves

Study of the on-going process of domestication

1. Informant interviews – especially about desired traits, planting methods, methods of selection for breeding or seed stock.

2. Participant observation3. Collection of native texts4. Field observations – grain, fruit, or vegetable

measurements; altitude, temperature, varietal flowering and maturation rates; mapping locations and distances to fields from farm or village; soil and vegetative analysis of sample fields at various stages of crop-fallow cycle.

Phytoanthropology

• Phytoanthropology examines the extent of similarities and differences in the responses of various human communities to their plant neighbors, and the reasons for these human responses.

Bo Tree – Ficus religiosa

Silk Cotton Tree – Bombax ceiba

Arrowhead –Sagittaria sagittifolia