Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline

by Richard Evans Schultes, Siri von Reis

Overview

Originally published on the 100th anniversary of the science of ethnobotany, this voume provides a comprehensive summary of the history and modern state of the field. The 36 articles from scientists across the world present a truly global perspective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780881929720
Publisher:	Timber Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/19/2008
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

The late Richard Evans Schultes, Jeffrey Professor of Biology and Director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University (Emeritus), was a plant explorer, ethnobotanist, and conservationist. He was known as the world's authority on medicinal, narcotic, and hallucinogenic plants in the New World.

Read an Excerpt

Plants have always been more important than politics — both to human daily living and to history. Even today, millions of subsistence farmers have no idea who their nominal political leaders are, but they know a great deal about their plants — sometimes even more than scientists. Furthermore, plants have had a greater historical impact than have politicians. An excellent example is provided by the few wheat seeds of an unknown Mennonite who stuffed his (or more probably, her) pockets before leaving the Russian steppes in the 1870s. Those seeds grew into plants so tolerant of cold that they made winter wheat a practical reality for the United States and Canada. By 1919, Turkey red, resulting from the gift of those destitute foreigners, accounted for ninety-eight percent of winter wheat in the United States. Its contribution to generations of North Americans, including farmers, millers, freight-train operators, bakers, accountants, capitalists, and consumers, has been far greater than the contributions of the presidents of the 1870s, not to mention the thousands of lesser legislators of that decade.
Mennonite wheat is just one of dozens of plants, many of them from primitive aboriginal societies, that directed and changed history. Southeast Asia's banana so transformed Central American republics that their economies now rely on this fruit for their survival, and South America's pineapple changed Hawaii from a sleepy, exotic way station to an outpost of hard-driving enterprise from which it has never recovered. In less than a century the Amazon's rubber tree revolutionized industries and lifestyles around the world. Africa's oil palm probably changed the landscape of large parts of Southeast Asia more than World War II did, and quinine from Java's cinchona plantations affected the overall tropics in a way that no political ruler could ever match: it has saved thousands of lives.
By the beginning of the twentieth century people began to forget the plant world's significance to themselves and their history. But now the plants and their age-old relationships with humans are returning once again to prominence. Human history is based in great part on ethnobotany, the precious knowledge of the properties of plants among indigenous people amassed over millennia.
This volume, therefore, can be seen as a kind of prehistory that tells much about our past, but also much about our present and future. It outlines and details the evermore vital links that have connected people to their plants and that still connect them. And ethnobotany can give us a glimpse of the world to come.

Table of Contents

Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgements. Contributors. Part One: General ethnobotany. Part Two: Socioethnobotany. Part Three: Historical ethnobotany. Part Four: Ethnobotanical conservation. Part Five: Ethnobotany in education. Part Six: Ethnobotanical contributions to general botany. Part Seven: Ethnobotany and geography. Part Eight: Ethnopharmacology. Part Nine: Ethnomycology. Part Ten: Archeaoethnobotany. Index of scientific names.

Editorial Reviews

An important, in-depth academic study of a discipline for those with a serious interest in ethnobotany.” —Library Journal

“An important reference for anyone interested in a whole range of fields related to plants and people from anthropology to sociology; highly recommended for all libraries.” —Choice

“Readers interested in the topics will find these essays to be succinct and current overviews of each area. . . and it should be recommended to all libraries covering ethnobotany.” —International Journal of Pharmacology

“There is little doubt that this reference will become a classic for teaching ethnobotany, in field work, and in laboratory research for generations to come.” —Quarterly Review of Biology

“Overall, the editors did a splendid job in presenting the breadth and depth of this exciting field.” —Plant Science Bulletin

“I feel that this book is an essential addition to the collection of anyone interested in ethnobotany.” —Economic Botany

“Ethnobotany gives a very stimulating and useful overview of the first 100 years of this field. The book will hopefully be the basis for further theoretical and methodological developments.” —Anthropos

“This volume will be a fixture in Botanical History, with thirty-six excellent articles that cover a grand variety of topics of these sciences. . . . An indispensable addition for every botanist and pharmacologist.” —Tropical Biology Review

“A timely volume that presents a broad overview of ethnobotany, showing how this rapidly developing field of inquiry has evolved to its present day high degree of sophistication.” —Northeastern Naturalist

“This textual benchmark in the field of ethnobotany will undoubtedly find lasting value as recommended reading for students of ethnobotany and related subjects.” —Discovery

“This collection calls to anyone interested in the cultural origins of medicine, as well as the conservation of the environments from which this knowledge emanates. . . . I urge everyone interested in natural medicine to read this book. It is a literary treasure.” —Library Letter

 

From the Publisher

"An important reference for anyone interested in a whole range of fields related to plants and people from anthropology to sociology; highly recommended for all libraries."—L. G. Kavaljian, Choice, September 1996

Choice - L. G. Kavaljian

"A timely volume that presents a broad overview of ethnobotany, showing how this rapidly developing field of inquiry has evolved to its present day high degree of sophisticaiton."—Northeastern Naturalist, February 1998

Northeastern Naturalist

The value of biodiversity and the need to preserve the untapped botanical resources of places like the Amazon rain forests is now widely acknowledged. Less widely understood but equally threatened is a key means of access to these resources, the knowledge and use of these plants by local nonliterate peoples whose traditional cultures are fast disappearing. This book explains and promotes ethnobotany, which investigates this knowledge by providing an overview of its history, practice, and value worldwide. Chapters are contributed by an impressive international array of field ethnobotanists, conservationists, and academics. Schultes spent many years as a field ethnobotanist, professor, and director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, where von Reis is an associate. This is an important, in-depth academic study of a discipline for those with a serious interest in ethnobotany. Libraries seeking more popular works might consider two books Schultes wrote with Robert F. Raffauf: the photographic essay Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men, Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia (Synergetic Pr., 1992) and The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia (Dioscorides Pr., 1990).-Marit MacArthur, Auraria Lib., Denver

Library Journal