Botany session 6

© Copyright PCNM 2011
Botany and Pharmacognosy
Session 6

Review
Last week we covered:
• Fruit & Seeds
• Fruit Dispersal
• Inhibitors

This Session
During this session we will
cover:
Ethnobotony

Ethnobotany
• The term ethnobotany comes from the
Greek: ethno-cultural groups of people, -
ology- the study of, and botany- the study of
plants.
• Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the
relationships that exist between people and
plants. It does not just describe the use of
plants but locates plants within their cultural
context in particular societies, and situates
peoples within their ecological contexts.
www.accessexcellence.org

Ethnobotany
• Ethnobotany is a branch of ethnobiology, the study of past and
present interrelationships between human cultures and the plants,
animals and other organisms in their environment. It makes
apparent the connection between human cultural practices and the
sub-disciplines of biology.
ntbg.org

Ethnobotany
• The term ethnobotany was first
used by the US botanist John
William Harshberger in 1895 but its
roots extend back at least two
thousand years, to Greek, Roman
and pre-Islamic sources.
en.wikipedia.org

Ethnobotany
• In 77AD, the Greek surgeon Dioscorides published De Materia
Medica, a catalogue of approximately six hundred plants found
growing in the Mediterranean region.
• This illustrated herbal described the appearance, medicinal
properties and other characteristics of plants used in herbal
medicine. Information was included on how and when each plant
was gathered, its use by the Greeks, and whether or not the plant
was edible.
• Dioscorides even provided recipes! He also assessed the economic
potential of each plant.
en.wikipedia.org
De Materia Medica

Ethnobotany
• The earliest known herbal was
compiled by the Chinese
emperor Shen Nung before
2000BC.
• It is known that both the Incas
of South America and the
Aztecs of Mesoamerica
maintained botanical gardens.
Shen Nung
en.wikipedia.org

Ethnobotany
• Ethnobotany appears to have been neglected in the Western world
during the Dark Ages, that period of time between the fall of the
Roman Empire in the fifth century, and the Italian Renaissance in
the fourteenth century.
• The Renaissance in Europe saw a revival of interest in ethnobotany.
This interest was intensified by geographic exploration, and then
colonialism.
www.huh.harvard.edu

Ethnobotany
• Ethnobotanical writings again began to emerge.
• In 1542 the Renaissance artist Leonhart Fuchs published De
Historia Stirpium, a catalogue of four hundred plants native to
Germany and Austria.
• The Englishman, John Gerard published the Herball or Generall
Histories of Plantes in 1597. It remained in print for over four
hundred years.
De Historia Stirpium library.missouri.edu

Ethnobotany
• In 1753, the Swedish botanist
Carolus Linnaeus, wrote Species
Plantarum, with information on
over 5900 plants. Linnaeus is
known as the father of taxonomy
as he popularised binomial
nomenclature, in which all living
organisms are assigned a two-part
name, genus and species.
Carolus Linnaeus
en.wikipedia.org

Ethnobotany
• The nineteenth century saw the
peak of botanical exploration.
Alexander von Humboldt gathered
specimens and information from
the ‘New World’.
• Captain James Cook returned from
his South Pacific voyages with
many botanical specimens and
information on their use.
• This was the time of the
establishment of major botanical
gardens in Europe, including the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in
England.
Captain James Cook’s
voyages to the South Pacific
vec.wikipedia.org

Ethnobotany
• In the late nineteenth century there was
increased interest in learning how
different cultures used the various plants
growing in their localities. This was the
beginning of modern ethnobotany.
• Much of the first fieldwork was conducted
in the North American West, and was
referred to as ‘aboriginal botany’.
• During this time there as an immense
amount of raw data collected, and some
attempt to analyse the uses of the plants
from an indigenous/local perspective
ntbg.org

Ethnobotany
• Famous names in ethnobotany at this time included Edward
Palmer, Matilda Coxe Stevenson and Wilfred Robbins. They
researched the use of indigenous plants by the inhabitants of the
Great Basin region of America, and of Mexico.
• Edward Palmer collected artefacts and botanical specimens from
peoples in North American West, known as the Great Basin, and
Mexico, from the 1860s to the 1890s.
www.dailykos.com

Ethnobotany
• Aboriginal botany is the study
of all forms of the vegetable
world which aboriginal peoples
use for food, medicine, textiles,
building materials,
ornamentation, and for spiritual
and religious uses.
en.wikipedia.org
www.etwa.org.au

Ethnobotany
• These studies were what is now called etic studies. Etic studies are
those performed by someone outside the cultural group being
studied. Etic studies attempt to be culturally neutral.
• Emic studies are those performed by people from within that
particular culture. Emic studies and accounts are described in terms
that are meaningful to the person making them. This may be
deliberate but it may also occur unconsciously when someone from
within a culture describes part of that culture.
epicureandculture.com

Ethnobotany
• These terms were coined by a
linguist, Kenneth Pike, in 1954. It
has been argued that etic refers to
objective views from outsiders, and
emic refers to subjective or insider
accounts. However, Pike and some
anthropologists have asserted that
cultural ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are
equally capable of producing emic
and etic accounts of a culture.
itec-edu.org

Ethnobotany
• Early ethnobotanical studies were not
very reliable because there was little
collaboration between botanists and
anthropologists. The botanists
concentrated on identifying plant
species and how they were used, rather
than focussing on how plants fit into
people’s lives. On the other hand,
anthropologists were interested in the
cultural role of plants but not the
scientific aspect. It was not until the
early twentieth century that botanists
and anthropologists finally collaborated,
and the collection of reliable, detailed,
relevant data began.
ucjeps.berkeley.edu

Ethnobotany
• There was now a shift from the raw compilation of data to analyses
of that data from a cultural and scientific point of view. This is
academic ethnobotany, developed by Richard Evans Schultes.
Schultes (1915-2001) was an American academic and researcher.
He studied the Native American uses of hallucinogenic plants.
kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com

Ethnobotany
• One of his enthnobotanical
discoveries was the source of the dart
poison, curare, used by South
American hunters. He also alerted the
world to the destruction of the Amazon
rainforest and its people.
• He is considered the father of modern
ethnobotany but is possibly most
known for his popular writings,
including The Plants of the Gods:
Their Sacred, Healing and
Hallucinogenic Powers, written in
1979 in collaboration with Albert
(Abbie) Hoffmann, the discoverer of
LSD.
www.youtube.com

Ethnobotany
• Today, the field of ethnobotany
requires a variety of skills: botanical
training for the identification and
preservation of plant specimens;
anthropological training to understand
the cultural concepts around the
perception of plants; linguistic training
to be able to transcribe local terms and
understand native language
morphology, syntax and semantics.
Ethnobotany is truly multidisciplinary,
encompassing not just botany,
anthropology and linguistics but also
archaeology, geography, medicine,
pharmacology, economics, and
landscape architecture.

Checkpoint!

Ethnobotany
• Ethnobotanical studies have a very broad range, from
archaeological investigations of the role of plants in ancient
civilisations to the bioengineering of new crops. Indigenous, non-
Westernised cultures play a crucial role in ethnobotany. As a result
of such studies it is now widely recognised that these cultures
possess much great knowledge of local ecology gained through
many centuries of interaction with their living environment.

Ethnobotany
• Ethnobotany is not limited to
studies of non-industrialised or
non-urbanised societies. With
increasing urbanisation and
industrialisation the relationship
between plants and humans has
altered, and there are many
studies of plant-human
relationships in the context of
urbanisation and globalisation in
the twentieth and twenty first
centuries.www.philipnixondesign.com

Ethnobotany
• The significance of ethnobotany is
manifold. Studying indigenous food
production may well lead to
developments in sustainable
agriculture. Local medicinal
knowledge studies lead to the
discovery of new medicines.
Ethnobotany also highlights the
importance of the link between
biodiversity and cultural diversity,
and helps develop understanding of
the mutual influences, both
beneficial and destructive, of plants
and humans.
salonedelgustoterramadre.slowfood.com

The Influence Of Human Culture
• The relationship between plants
and people is profound, affecting
nearly every aspect of our lives.
Why might plants have come to
function as the material basis for
human culture?
• The immediate answer is very
evident and encapsulated in the
succinct biblical text “All flesh is
grass”, Isaiah 40:6.
www.south-africa-the-real-issues.org

• We eat plants, or if we eat animals
they or their prey have eaten plants.
Their immobility makes them a more
reliable source of food than animals
which can move away and evade
capture.
• But we rely on plants for more than
food. The combination of their
immobility and their tremendous
production of cellulose means plants
are a much more efficient and
reliable source of building materials
for shelter.
ahaplessoul.blogspot.com

• Plants immobility also leads to
their great biochemical diversity.
Not being able to move away
from predators and noxious
stimuli has led to plants
producing chemicals as a way
of interacting with other
organisms in their environment,
as well as for protection from the
elements.
en.ria.ru

• These chemicals may be anti-
feedants so that insects do not kill
a plant or herbivores do not eat an
entire plant, or they may be
antioxidants to protect against
ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
• Some chemicals are produced as
pesticides, such as root secretions
to deter soil nematodes.
• Other chemicals are produced to
enlist the assistance of animals
such as bees and birds in
achieving pollination.

• Other chemicals make some fruits
attractive to animals so that seed may
be dispersed away from the parent
plant.
• Some chemicals act to prevent other
plants growing very close by, thus
reducing competition for water and
sunlight.
• Modern society still relies on chemical
constituents in plants for twenty five
percent of prescription drugs, and
nearly all recreational chemicals, such
as the caffeine in coffee, theophylline in
tea and nicotine in tobacco.
blacklemag.com

Branches of Ethnobotany
Ethnomedicine
• Ethnomedicine is a sub-field of medical
anthropology that deals with the study of
traditional medicines.
• This includes ancient written sources
which give us Traditional Chinese
medicine, Traditional Tibetan Medicine
and Ayurveda.
• It also includes all the cultures that may
not have had a written language but have
passed down their knowledge and
practices orally for many centuries.
www.sacredearth.com

Branches of Ethnobotany
• The focus for ethnomedicine may be the
indigenous perception and use of
traditional medicines, but drug discovery
and development also rely on this type
of research.
• Digoxin, morphine and atropine are
major pharmaceuticals which have been
developed from foxglove, the opium
poppy and belladonna, respectively.
• More recent developments of
podophyllotoxin and vinblastine as anti-
cancer drugs have also occurred
because of ethnomedical research.
Foxglove
www.realcork.org

Agriculture
• Agriculture may be defined as the
culturally influenced selection of
plants with specific genetic
characteristics that are desired by
humans to create domesticated
plants or crops. Ethnobotany
contributes to an understanding of
agriculture in two ways:
• It describes and explains the
many different ways the same
crop can be raised, whether for
economic gain, for sustained yield
or for other culturally specific
purposes.
• It reveals ways to create
genetically altered plants for
human purposes.
Quinoa Crop
www2.cnrs.fr

Agriculture
• There are many examples of the mutual influence of plants and
human cultures in agriculture. One is the cane sugar industry. This
developed as it did only because of the translocation of millions of
Africans from their homelands to the Caribbean and the Americas.
The slave trade has had enormous ramifications for the world.
libcom.org

Agriculture
• Another example of the mutual influence of plants and humans is
the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century.
• After the potato was introduced to Ireland in the latter half of the
1600s it rapidly became the staple diet.
• More than one third of the Irish depended entirely on the potato for
their food. The potato crop was a monoculture; all the potatoes
came from one strain.
• This strain was susceptible to potato blight, caused by Phytophthora
infestans, an oomycete or ‘water mould’.
potatonewstoday.com

Agriculture
• In the 1800s this caused the total
destruction of the Irish potato crop.
• More than a million people died from
starvation and another million
emigrated to countries such as the
United States of America, Canada
and Australia.
• The potato famine was also the
rallying point for organised dissent
against the English. Both the
Diaspora and the fight against the
English have had great impacts on
world history and the make up of the
modern America and Australia.
disney.wikia.com

Plants in Religion and Ritual
• An entheogen is a psychoactive
substance, usually some plant matter
with hallucinogenic effects that
causes an enlightening spiritual or
mystical experience. Indigenous
people from most countries have
employed a wide variety of
entheogens. Some examples include
Borrachero from the Brugsmania tree
and tryptamine-containing snuff from
the Tree of Knowledge,
Anadenathera. These, and many
other hallucinogenic substances, have
been derived from plants since
ancient times, and are still used
today.

Folk Classification
• Folk classification refers to how members
of a language community name and
categorise plants and animals. This type
of ethnobotanical study requires an emic
approach. The first person to publish a
modern emic perspective of the plant
world was Leopold Glueck.
• Although he was German he worked as a
physician in Sarajevo. His study on the
traditional uses of plants by the rural
people of Bosnia, published in 1896, is
considered the first modern
ethnobotanical work.

Archaeoethnobotany
• Archaeoethnobotany, or paleoethnobotany, is the study of the
ethnobotany of the ancient past.
• It is closely allied to modern ethnobotany as it is difficult to
understand the ecology of modern environments without considering
the environmental history that often involved prehistoric human
interventions.
anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu

Archaeoethnobotany
• The history of the domestication
of the cereal grain maize, or
corn, is a good example of the
melding of paleo- and modern
ethnobotany. It is thought that
this began up to 12000 years
ago, although recent
archaeological evidence from the
highlands near Oaxaca and from
the Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca
valley date corn domestication
between 6250 and 9000 years
ago.
commons.wikimedia.org

Ethnobotanical Publications
• There are several peer-reviewed ethnobotanical journals.including
the following:
• Journal of Ethnobiology
• Ethynobotany Research and Applications
• Journal of Ethnobiology and Etyhnomedicine
• Journal of Ethnopharmacology
• Economic botany
• Ethnobotany Research and Applications
• There is also the bimonthly BLACPMA, the Boletin latinoamericano
y del caribe de plantas medicinalis y aromaticas or The Latin
American and Caribbean Bulletin of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants
which accepts material covering a very wide range of ethnobotanical
interests.

Summary
Today we have covered;
• Ethnobotony

Next Session
We will cover:
• Phytochemistry, Part I

Preparation
Brief Notes
• Don’t forget to log on to the LMS and download and print off your
brief notes and handouts for the next session.

Botany session 6

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