Ethnobotany: The Science of Grandmothers

Have you ever wondered how and why your grandparents know so much about which plants are medicinal, edible, poisonous herbs, used for construction, firewood, water conservation, fertilizers, and multiple other uses? Here we will explain ethnobotany, the science of grandmothers.

Figure 1. Elderly person carrying the aceitilla plant for decongesting the respiratory tract; Location: Santa Cruz de Guasabasque, Lempira.

Since ancient times, rural societies have given different uses to plants to solve certain problems that arose in their daily lives. This popular knowledge has been passed down through the years from generation to generation. With the crisis of the rural world, there is a growing threat of losing this knowledge and many aspects related to the use of plants as natural resources (Úbeda, 2011). As a sample of this wealth of knowledge in the field of traditional food in Honduras, where it is possible to functionally document the use of different food resources: “Among the foods we count in the first place corn, which besides being food is an element of identity for many of our American peoples. There is a diversity of varieties of beans, squashes, cassavas, amaranths (guate, eligue or bledo), pacayas, palmitos, tubers (sweet potatoes, yams, vadú, malanga, Cuban cassava, casco de burro, guapala), usable inflorescences (macúz, izote, lorocos, mutas, madreado, pito or gualiqueme, saizocos and squash flowers), quiletes, purslane, juniapa, chaya, mustards, wild lettuces, chipilín, spinach, bamboo, nightshade. Fruits such as mazapán, zuncuyas, paternas, avocados, suptes, masica (ojushte or ramón), cilacayotes or chiberros, ciguanperos (cununo, champel or champeres), patastes, tomatoes of different types, diversity of bananas or plantains, and mushrooms (shoras de mecate, shoros soles, juanillas, cuernos de venado, chequecas, etc.)” (Ardón, 2017).

Figure 2:Chilacayote or Chiberro used in various regions of the country to make many recipes, including the famous alcitrón. Place: Yamaranguila, Intibucá.

We don’t like drinking the concoctions our mothers prepare, and much less those of our grandmothers! These are usually mixtures of herbs whose names we don’t even know or can’t pronounce. These cultural traits and knowledge run the risk of disappearing completely. Preventing the loss of invaluable knowledge of our country’s intangible cultural heritage is essential. In the face of the need to turn to natural resources that communities have, by using plants with medicinal properties to at least relieve primary health problems, it is of special relevance, since a large percentage of the world’s population—especially in developing countries like ours—use plants to face, among other things, primary needs of food and even medical assistance (Zambrano et al., 2015). For many years, and even today, the needs for plant material have been met through the collection of wild plants without scientific criteria, which is inefficient and uneconomical.

Figure 3: Home garden in a Lenca community of Yamaranguila, Intibucá.

In Honduras, basic and applied research has been developed very fragmentarily and without a predefined objective for the collection of wild plants, more as a pedagogical exercise than as part of articulated initiatives aimed at providing reliable information to constitute applied responses to development, with a vision of meeting the needs of populations and their territories. This makes the country a virgin space for carrying out initiatives for identification, rescue of natural biodiversity, and appropriation present in indigenous and peasant territories, rich in cultural expressions still alive in our villages, towns, and cities. When indigenous and peasant people migrate, many have brought with them some of these elements, which they have adapted to urban and peri-urban settings where they have settled.

The interest of national and international institutions may be attracted to the identification and research in the context of the diversity of plants and animals that indigenous communities have access to within their natural spaces, cultivation areas, and even their household surroundings, including the development of agroforestry systems consistent with climate conservation, restoration of eroded or highly degraded landscapes, and initiatives for the management of natural and appropriate biodiversity, considering family, community, regional needs, and even international market demands under criteria of alternative commercialization that appreciates and values the biological value of the products generated and adequately rewards their producers.

The contemporary economic situation of the indigenous and peasant communities of Honduras is characterized by minimal cash income, unemployment and underemployment due to low educational levels, limited access to resources (land, water, transportation, and markets), as well as the absence of professional technical assistance and a forced insertion into the market under disadvantageous conditions for small and medium family-community producers. In rural areas, communities lack health centers, clinics, or hospitals and must travel long distances or wait for external support brigades, government response, or international projects. This leads to functionally preserving their resources and traditional practices, and to seeking solutions to their daily problems with local specialists who are always present in the community or in neighboring communities within their immediate territories.

The identification, rescue, and documentation of this knowledge and practices used to solve their problems in different areas of daily life in rural indigenous communities and urban marginal areas constitutes a pending debt of our training centers at different levels. It is necessary to deepen the study and search for alternatives based on the resources, knowledge, and practices preserved by the inhabitants of our countryside and cities.

Tolupán elder woman behind cancerina (Kalanchoe) plant, as its common name indicates, popularly used in cancer treatment.

Ethnobotany is not only the simple listing of “useful” plant species, as many would believe, but the study of the interrelations of human beings with plants. Ethnobotany aims to seek out and rescue traditional knowledge of plants and fungi, particularly that related to conservation, propagation, and use of flora as a resource of great importance for human communities and their environmental, social, and economic development. We must take advantage before it is too late to study the knowledge of indigenous and peasant communities about our natural forested areas, located in diverse differentiated geographical contexts. Due to the accelerated loss and transformation of knowledge and practices, there is a risk of losing many elements of the knowledge and actions of our peoples regarding the resources and opportunities they have been gathering over the years.

Many of us have been concerned in societies like ours. These rescue and deepening works must be carried out urgently because the loss of knowledge is much faster, and one must go beyond botanical research, since its goals are concentrated around the cultural significance or value of plants in certain human communities (Barrera, 1976).

It is estimated that one in seven plant species in the world possesses some healing property, but chemical-pharmacological and biomedical validation has only been carried out in 5% of these species (Veloza, 2014). Ethnobotany is a useful tool for rescuing knowledge about the use of wild and cultivated plant resources that humanity has been taking advantage of for centuries. For example, one commercial industry like Merck in Germany finances initiatives involving missions of 30 scientists sent to our peasant and indigenous communities to collect up to 10,000 samples, sometimes resulting in two commercial products. Meanwhile, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Shaman Chemical sends a mission of five scientists to our indigenous or peasant communities to collect plants or animals used within their healing practices in context, and from every two samples collected, two commercial products emerge. This can help us strike a positive balance on the importance of an adequate economic valuation of the traditional knowledge and practices of our indigenous and peasant communities.

It is important to carry out interdisciplinary studies that can provide baseline information for projects with multiple applications that articulate the contributions of different disciplines: History, Anthropology, Geography, Ecology, Ethnobotany, Chemistry, and more recently Agroecology, for the rescue, preservation, and application to development of the traditional and ancestral knowledge of communities, and about the multiple implications and interrelations that from an articulated vision of these disciplines can be addressed now and especially for the future.

Figure 5: Elderly person carrying corn cobs for seeds in Guajiquiro, La Paz.

It should never be forgotten that the first beneficiaries of these ethnobotanical studies, under a vision that draws from various scientific disciplines, must be the carriers of traditional knowledge and practices and their communities. Contributing a valuable tool for the development of depressed regions, studying both local plant resources and their sustainable management (Pardo & Gómez, 2003). The importance of promoting future ethnobotanical and chemical studies must be highlighted, through the collection of plants of traditional use and their subsequent laboratory tests and industrialization, to be used in applied responses to different territorial dimensions. For example, the information collected can be useful for those who wish to learn about the market of medicinal, edible, and cultural plants as raw materials for environmental, social, and economic development projects. With due caution, since often the knowledge of these communities is studied only to be absorbed by large pharmaceutical industries without reporting benefits for the development of the territories of origin of the resources, knowledge, and traditional botanical practices of peasant and indigenous communities. The results of ethnobotanical studies must have as their purpose—not only the generation of knowledge—but also the promotion of economic development of the communities through the discovery of new species, as well as diversifying their uses, whether in medicine, food technology, or cultural aspects, etc. (Latorre, 2008). Emphasizing the importance of contributing to the development of peasant and indigenous communities located within the territorial jurisdictions where the research has taken place.

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By: Eylin Ordóñez, Biologist

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REFERENCES

Ardón Mejía, M. (2017) La Sigualepa: Estudios sobre Cultura Popular Tradicional Aplicada. Ed. Universitaria UNAH, 524pp. Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Barrera, A. (1976). La Etnobotánica. Cuadernos de Divulgación, México, D.F. Núm. 5: 9-12.

Latorre, J. A. (2008). Estudio Etnobotánica de la Provincia de la Coruña. Tesis Doctoral. Universidad de Valencia. Facultada de Farmacia Departamento de Botánica. 690 pp.

Pardo de Santayana, M. & Gómez Pellón, E. (2003). Etnobotánica: aprovechamiento tradicional de plantas y patrimonio cultural. Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 60(1): 171 -182.

Úbeda, J. (2011). Recursos Naturales y Etnobotánica: Usos y aprovechamientos de las plantas de la Cañada Real Segoviana en Toledo. 205 pp.

Veloza, F. (2014). Estudio Etnográfico del Tratamiento del Accidente Ofídico en el Municipio de San Luis, Departamento de Antioquia, Percepciones y Creencias de la Comunidad. Bogotá, Colombia. 76 pp.

Zambrano, L., Buenaño, M., Mancera, N. & Jiménez, E. (2015). Estudio Etnobotánico de plantas medicinales utilizadas por los habitantes del área rural de la Parroquia San Carlos, Quevedo Ecuador. Rev Univ. Salud, 17(1):97-111.