A multi-part question on Ethnobotanical Databases.

[Matt]

Here's a question from a layman. Let's say I want to know about plants and a particular cultural group or region of the world. What single site can I go on the web to enter the name of that group or region to retrieve a *list* of the scientific names of some of the most significant plants related to that culture and a brief summary of their medicinal, ritual or religious significance?

If there is no such database and website, why isn't there? On the surface it doesn't seem to be a super-gargantuan task to create something even of limited coverage to start (which could of course be amplified on an on-going basis).

A list of scientific names would seem to me to be a very solid starting point (being in a sense the "primary key") for all the elaborate internet-based research we already know is possible.

If such a thing already exists, please drop me a link to it.

Matt

[Brian Altonen]

I taught in this field for more than 25 years now in the university setting and have spent most of my time working on plant taxonomy and chemistry and the correlation of phytochemistry to the anthropologic history of plants. My focus is on the evolution and synthesis pathways for wood and fiber-related natural products, simple and complex alkaloids, phenols, quinones, all terpenes including phytosterols, seed oils (fatty acids), flavonoids, iridoids, latex products, toxins, food stuffs, etc. etc.. I have spent much of this time researching traditional Native American ethnobotanical findings forwarded to me, and the ethnobotanical claims noted in past and present anthropological and medical writings.

I think that the best database would be one that provides scientific information, especially chemical, for use by others capable of adding their own cultural and personal interpretation to the scientific information. If we add culture and religion to this database, we have several problems that have to be dealt with.

First, it could be very very difficult to get a single database that really captures everything. I have known some publishers and academicians who like to think they can do this effectively, since the late 1980s, but each has only managed to grasp this information from just a single point of view. I worked to develop two such databases beginning in the early to mid-1980s (when my home PC was in fact really primitive (4 kb harddrive)). When I took on a professorship in phytochemistry back in 1987, I developed a way to interpret this information based on a plant evolution tree to which phytochemical information was added and then analyzed. Even though there are specific ways to better understand the phytochemical evolutionary sequences and their natural means for development and existence, putting this information into perspective with traditional anthropological work becomes problematic due to the differences in underlying philosophies that exist.

The problem: except in certain western medical settings, medicine is rarely just scientifically based. Knowing medicine in another cultural setting requires knowledge of tradition and philosophy, and less knowledge about actual plant chemistry or toxicology/pharmacology effects. Until the roots of the philosophy of medicine that you are dealing with is documented, you cannot know what path to take when analyzing a reason for a particular medicinal plant use. You have to know: is the use metaphysically based or is it purely physically based?

Rarely does a use for a plant begin with the ideology that this use can be fully documented and defined (or proven to be "ineffective") using western scientific reasoning and philosophy. Yet, this is the approach many scholars want to take. To research a plant use you need to know whether or not there is a physical effect that a plant causes, and how does this relate to the cultural ideology on how this links to its effectieness? How do the people making use of this drug define the philosophy of its use? Is the effect of the plant a result of your philosophy and expectations, or is it due to something potentially pharmacological in nature? Was there a desired state already defined before the search for this plant as an medical source began? Or did this desired state erupt as a consequence of discovering the "side effects" of consuming your product of such a plant?

If you look at the entire materia medica (plants list and their medical uses) for a single cultural setting, 90% or more of how and why a plant is used is cultural, and lacks any scientific basis for being correct and actually true; 5 to 10% of the time, these plants may actually have uses due to an actual pharmacological or physiologic effect; this effect may be an impact of its general toxicity that is physiologically important, but still cannot lead to a new presciption drug discovery by western physicians. Take for example the traditional herbal cures for edema of the legs (left heart failure or kidney failure), the lungs (right heart failure or pleuritis) or abdomen (dropsy): plants that are toxic and cause sweating and those which increase urine flow both meet the needs of the philosophy that says we can draw the humors (water) or swelling from within, causing it to flow out of the body for its final release. Then, there are plants that are specifically selectively toxic in nature. They not only meet the needs of the scientists and doctors--by causing you to sleep, sweat, throw up, change your BP or pulse rate, etc.--but also meet the standards of scientific community as a whole, for the time. In turn, there is a slight chance (<1%) that these medicines will not only be fully analyzed, but also be found to be important new sources for new western medicines that ultimately become prescription drug products. Keep in mind, these medicines are only considered valid and good for just 5 to 20 years, so long as the theory supporting their use is good, and conforms to beliefs about how a body becomes "better" due to the changes these medicines cause in its chemical make-up and how it reacts to this change in its homeostatis.

Due to much of the focus on plant medicines as a pure science, meeting the needs (heeding to the beliefs and teachings of) allopathic westertn philosophy since the 1940s, we are very much left with the perception that we can all aspire to be like Richard Evans Schultes, and go on to discover in some distant setting a miraculous cure or chemical bearing plant like Chondrodendron's tubocurarine. Schultes's discovery of curare and several other alkaloids and steroidal glycosides during this time helped to support the ideology that there are in fact more phytochemicals waiting to be discovered.

In more recent decades we have come to learn this search can be very expensive. Good chemicals seem harder to find. A better way to know hopw and where to find these chemicals has to be uncovered.

By interpreting plants chemotaxonomically and as an evolutionary product, finding the next highly selective toxin that is also a cure becomes less difficult. Twenty-five years into this, I found that the best approaches to this type of research require that we develop a better understanding of the complexity of plants as a natural products source, for any and all cultural settings. Since many plant uses span across all cultural boundaries, for generations or centuries (unlike scientifically derived uses for plants), it is more important to understand their ethnopharmacology as a cultural, philosophical and historical study, than as a scientific study.

There are effective databases on American Indian Medicine, Chinese/Oriental medicine, etc. that might help to do this, but mostly for one or a few particular cultural settings at a time. In perhaps a few years or more something really useful that we can use to engage in these studies might be out there. But achieving this will take a serious effort by scholars in the different parts of this field to fully accomplish such a task. After doing this type of work now for more than 25 years and I am only comfortable with my own decoding of many plant identifications when noted to be in error in the writings, since too many times I have had to correct errors made by others who never understood the medical philosophy enough to draw the right conclusions. This is especially the case when we look at the historical medical anthropology work.

For now, I tell the students or researchers who contact me to give me a time period, cultural setting, regional or country name, place, religious setting, and a vocation. Then, I can come up with a list of expectations regarding the person's own self-defined and culturally and professionally defined belief system and how a particular plant may have been used. There are a few questions that you really have to know the answers to before determining how and why a plant medicine is used and whether or not it works according to your paradigm:

Is the medical professional using a plants basing his/her philosophy of sanative or sanitative traditions?
Is he/she "religious" and/or required to abide by natural philosophy traditions?

Shaman versus science.

The answers to just these two questions tell us a lot about the role of cultural and/or religion in defining the medical healing faith being used. If we don't know the answer to the questions, we have a 50-50 chance of basing our conclusions on the wrong lines of reasoning. That means, for a database with plant uses to be accurate, it has to be twice as large as originally planned; its developer needs to take into account the underlying cultural and sanative philosophies of medicine.

This is pretty much the reason herbal medicines discovered by reviewing North American cultures and writings have been so ineffective. Scientists never take into account sanative traditions, much less know what this is exactly, when they document a particular herbal use. Nor do they teach this as part of their ethnobotany and pharmacology training. This is akin to scientists stating that mindbody relationships do not exist, or that philosophy has nothing to do with how much we believe in the paths we take as part of a healing process.

Understanding whether or not a remedy is sanative-based tells us whether or not the plant being used is meant to cause an event or cause its opposite to happen. Is the medicine meant to supress something like a fever (allopathic or regular medicine often reduces symptoms)? or was it meant cause the body to undergo its natural reactions to the problem, and in turn become stronger and more reactive/defensive against the signs of the illness. Nineteenth century western traditions often transfer a belief that is sanative in nature and modify it to fit their own standards. The documentation of Native American snakebite remedies during the colonial period (17th and 18th century) exemplify this tradition.

Native American snakebite remedies help demonstrate this issue we have with transferring our beliefs to those of the culture we are trying to study and document, and vice versa. As early as the 15th century, the South American culture fascinated the Europeans with its the idea of the use of Aristolochia as a "snakebite" remedy, due to the resemblance of the plant to a snake itself (a vine crawling up a tree in the tropical forests, with a flower containing parts that resembled to head, face and/or tongue). This phytognomics (doctrine of signatures) of Aristolochia was an interpretation of plants common to European culture as well, made popular by Giambattista Porta during the 16th C, but scoffed at by some explorers who viewed the Native American phytognomic interpretation as a mistake. Some european writers even replaced these Native American images with more acceptible European images like the royal 'fleur-de-lis' or such. As the European culture took on some of these new world medicines, some of which worked, they continued to make use of them but peridically updated their philosophy to best match the scientific discoveries of the time. As a result, we witness the results of this continuation of philosophy more than a century later, in later explorers' writings and even recent herbal medicine writings. A number of these herbs are still in use today by traditionalist practitioners and herbalists.

Take for eample the plants designed to treat snakebites which Native Americans felt bore the animal spirit of the snake (bearing a sign indicative of such an attribute) and therefore could be used to strengthen the individual taken/injured by this an animal spirit (bitten by a snake, or taken by the animal spirit in some metaphysical sense). Some of these "signatures" resembled the snake head, some had a surface resembling its scaley skin, some had the rhizomes that crack when they dry and resemble rattlers tails, etc.. These herbs reside naturally in close proximity to the snake (or illness) related to that snake, as a part of the local ecology. Many of them were discovered early 19th C regular doctor physicians and their uses redefined to best meet the standards for the time. As a result herbalists used these herbs to treat fevers (some venoms make you sweat), uterine cramping (venom bites cause deep muscle pain, this became the reasoning behind using the cohoshes--Caullophylum and Cimicifuga--for treating menstrual cramping), calm the nerves (some venoms make you convulse-the scullcap/Scutellaria herb stops this), or to serve as a tonic to cleanse the blood.

To better research and understand ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, we need to take in account that which we learn from historical and anthropological writings, with the primary goal of searching for the philosophies upon which these beliefs and uses are based. We may then apply this to knowledge to our approach to interpreting the uses we document as anthropologists and modern scientists, being sure to put these uses into the best perspective, so they do not become misinterpreted or misapplied by other scholars. Trying to explain the reasons for the effect of a plant has to take into account both philosophical and scientific reasoning, with the latter carried out only once we are certain about our understanding of the underlying philosophy. It is kind of embarassing to make a statement about a plant use only to later learn that your reasoning was based on taking the wrong path and so is actually the opposite of what you first claimed to be the case.

[Matt]

Dear Brian,

I feel rather privileged to have initiated such a very highly substantial response with my decidedly un-scholarly question. Thank you. I am doing my best to understand what you wrote as it might relate to my own very modest understanding of plants and their uses. Thankfully of course, through this forum your words are reaching people who are far better equipped to evaluate their significance. I hope I will get some time to make some more thoughtful and specific comments on your "essay." I am curious to know if I may have grasped at least part of what you're getting at. I hope you will also have the satisfaction of some meaningful and synergistic responses from the group. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with us so eloquently, giving us this essay and for allowing my question to be the catalyst for this.

Sincerely,
Matt

[Matt]

Dear Brian,

I'm finally adding an additional reply to this post because I wanted to follow-up with a brief stab at interpreting your original response to my question.

One of the primary points I was able to distill from your reply (that which most directly relates to the question of an ethnobotanical database) was that a mere list of medicinal uses of any plant is pretty meaningless by itself. You need to consider such things as--does the treatment require faith, belief, or understanding of, or belonging to a particular culture/setting/group in order to be effective? What is the culture's definition of health? What is its definition of disease? What kind of effect is the plant taken to produce? To counter-act an effect by producing its opposite? Etc, etc. Based on the resemblance of the plant to an animal?

So, from a database designer's point of view, the question would be how will the database organize all these items of information?

Did I at least partly get the point? Once these things are stated, especially as lucidly as you have, they seem obvious and common sense.

By the way, could some of your posts in this thread (plus editing/amplification) be made into an article or book chapter or something like that? Seems to me it would be fine in that role.

Since my original post I have done a lot of thinking about what kind of "ethnobotanical database" exactly I was proposing or hoping for. I'd like to detail that some in a new thread soon and would much appreciate any input.

Thanks,

Matt

[Peter Matthews]

Dear Matt,

Although a universal ethnobotanical database might seem like a useful goal, logistically it is difficult, and also it might be a lot of work to create something that would have to make limiting assumptions about the interests and needs of potential users.

Another approach, which could be seen as an indefinite or open Phase One, would be to conduct broad reviews, at various geographical scales, to introduce existing literature and databases. The reviews could be designed to be always open for revision and updating.

At the same time, for the few specific areas where there is a relative abundance of information, you or others could try to establish prototype databases that attempt to incorporate the very valuable insights that Dr Altonen has provided here.

From a variety of prototypes, designed to take advantage of what is known for different phytogeographical or cultural regions, some key databases and designs might eventually emerge (and some may already exist).

Perhaps there is a value in database diversity, just as there is in biological and cultural diversity.

Cheers, P.

[Brian Altonen]

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.

For a while I tried to think through how to manage this (ca. 1992), and I did get somewhere with all that analysis. But in doing this, the required readings, analyses of philosophies, and cross-cultural research avenues, led me to some of the conclusions that now I often make in my classes.

For example, I came upon some methods of treatment that even the 17th C writers who discussed their applciations by Inuit, Montagnards, etc. on Eastern Canada, noted the fact that "sanative" philosophy very much had to do with what the indigenous groups believed in and practiced, and that as onlookers they very much understood the meaning and impact of this sanative belief on their own methods of interpreting these medical practices. The editor of this series of New France did not relate this to any of the medical practices he subsequently covered.

It ends up that pretty much subconsciously, as a normal part of human behavior and cognition, we interpret things and add our own take on what's happening. Even in anthropology, we often practice medical anthropology based on some part of the western philosophy. Do we look at every medicine and action and try to interpret (or ask the healer) what parts of their philosophy are used to draw this conclusion about the use? Experts probably should, even though that means you'll be doubling or tripling the time needed to really take good and effective notes in the field. And then there is the notion of doing this research for some science-based reason, for example to promote this new medicine as a new "drug". At the scientific/pharmaceutical level, when some scientists follows up on the anthropologists' leads, they all too often do not interpret the plant use in a non-scientific, philosophic way, and so they miss the point and meaning regarding its use. The best research teams have ethnologists and cultural anthropologists included for this exact reason. Yet, I still see and talk to researchers at the university and federal level who are researching something he/she learned about how some culture in some far away place that treated a febrile illness (they often assume Malaria) with a local plant, and so perform the research and tests required for their grant without even asking about the philosophy of the medicine, to see if they are even in the right ballpark.

The best example of this right now--some people are arguing that Plantago majus (Plantain) is good for cancer. Phytochemists are saying they have found the reason--iridoids--some class of compounds previously ignored by the same field of experts. But where did this legend and lead to a new cancer cure come from? Erasmus's myth about a toad, spider and plantain leaf, where the toad used the plantain leaf to treat a wound the spider bite gave it (a sting or bite). This got interpreted as useful for warts and swellings onthe skin as well, and then canker, and then cancer (for the most part, the two were treated as identicals up to 1850/65). Today, scientists believe this herbal medicine legend came from an actual use and experience with cancer, even though the true knowledge of cancer did not exist in those cultural settings. (The molecular theory we based modern drugs on is only sufficiently understood by about the 1950s or even 1960s, once the make-up of DNA was determined; even so, it wasn't until the 1970s that the first real plant-derived cancer drug still in use was discovered, the main ingredient responsible for treating liver ailments--podophyllum (main ingredient in a 19th C medicine Carter's Pills) made the stool yellow with bile.) Often researchers go into this analysis because they want/have to find the reason on how and why it possibly works, according to their expert knowledge in the filed. Some researchers even believe they did.

It is actually quite common for indigenous groups to have a strong faith-based physiognomic interpretation (doctrine of signatures) of what they use and why/how the procedure works for them. Sometimes it is just the color, and nothing more, that makes them believe a plant has got to work. In some indigenous settings, there is an Apocynum (dogbane) that exudes a red latex when it is cut. This family of plants (Apocynaceae) is rich in cardiotoxic steroidal alkaloids. To the indigenous healer, the red can mean it is used to treat bleeding, or fevers that make you skin flush, of may just be an elemental, religious or physical condition (i.e. heat) symbol. Just down the trail another culture may interpret its jointed-like lateral rhizome as something symbolic of the snake. And yet another, may be very aware of the toxicity and impact on the heart and make it into a poison to hunt with (similar to ouabain or strophanthin), or knowledge to share with a scientist searching for a new highly selective toxin for heart, for treating hypertension or cardiac arrhythmias, what have you.

Ahh, but we forgot to consider the sanative interpretation of all of this. What if the goal of the healer was to excite the heart, or assist with bleeding hoping to initiate coagulation/reduced the rate of the heartbeat, or simply manifest within the individual a serpent, snake, to drive out the illness (the serpent) from the blood (by making him/her worse and then hopefully recover, stronger due to the illness experience)? By missing these pieces of the philosophy, we may research something and begin to go down the wrong path before drawing our own conclusions. We don't want to mislead our fellow scholars.

It is possible to produce a dataset on the plant that contains several major components, and some way to classify or interpret them. Defining categories to keep in mind are: sanative vs. non-sanative, physical (physiologic) or metaphysical, philosophical, religion-based, or other spiritual, selectively toxic vs. non-selectively toxic (tonics, general emetics (not ipecac-based) and laxatives, diaphoretics), what are the phytognomics as the culture believes and interprets them to be? what is "science" according to that culture (faith, humours/unani, elements/european-orient, hot-cold/Latin America, yin-yang and chi/orient, etc.)? is there a scientific basis for the (any) use of this plant? how about a scientific basis for the specific use of this plant cited by the culture, according to western philosophy and teachings for the present time?

[Peter Matthews]

Dear Matt,

In a sense, DeCandolle already started creating what you are suggesting (in the 19th century), and Vavilov extended the wide geographical approach with his world map of centers of crop diversity, which allows us to align crops with cultures at a subcontinental scale. Nothing similar has been done with medicinal plants, as far as I know, or with edible wild plants, or with fibre crops, but DeCandolle and Vavilov have had many successors who have redrawn the world map, or who have made more detailed maps of crop diversity for particular regions.

There have not been many efforts to map crop assemblages - in detail - across cultural areas on a world scale. Crops and cultures do not align in any simple one-to-one manner, so the task would not be simple, even if we had sufficient distributional information for any particular historical period, including the present (see reply by Brian Altonen in this thread for more on the challenges faced just for medicinal plants).

The best that can be hoped for is a kind of iterative process of approximation that also recognises that crop distributions and cultural boundaries and definitions have always been dynamic and still are.

People have been adopting and moving crops and crop varieties back and forth - across territorial and cultural boundaries - for many thousands of years. This is a basic human behavior, an area of human rights or heritage that is not really acknowledged by attempts to fit the behavior into contemporary, commercial and national frameworks of intellectual property law, or plant variety rights.

The idea that a particular crop belongs to any particular culture or community only holds true for some very-localised crop species or varieties. Personally, I am most interested in useful plants that were already almost universal in ancient times - plants such as Lagenaria (bottle gourd), Colocasia (taro), Pteridium (bracken fern), Typha (catstail/bullrush), Quercus (oaks), etc. The widespread use of such plants across different continents speaks to our common humanity.

[Brian Altonen]

Peter and Matt,

It's a good idea to review those maps again. I am developing shapefiles for this type of mapping on my GIS, but that takes time, and am trying to determine how to draw and support more of my conclusions statistically. I have the dataset for linking to GIS set ups, just not all of the distribution maps yet.

There are maps of world culture that I learned about in some Social Geography classes years back. I have some of of Alexander Johnston's maps on this topic, and found that about 15 to 20 years ago the National Geographic Society did some descent work on the world's major crops--mostly starch and grain/cereal crops though. The late 19th century maps of vegetation/plant zones and domains (mostly of German, Dutch or Swedish origin) are also very helpful, especially when you try overlapping the two with GIS. These are most easily found in late 19th C German Geography books once used in the schools (the English versions are all bought up, and not as impressive as the German maps). The Russian cartographers of the 19th century were exceptional macrogeographers as well, who focused on the economic geography aspects of all natural resource products. During the 1980s, a lot of American scholars tried to make a lot of these available to the English-speaking academic world and so translated what they could into a Geography journal published specifically for this reason (cannot recall the real title for this series).

So, for starters, if someone wants to study plant taxonomy in relation the ethnobotany -- try VH Heywood's Flowering Plants of the World. Mayflower Books, 1978. It has world maps for the Families covered; then learn about the family members--genus species using any of a number of photo books on this topic. Heywood's is usually still available used as a hardcopy and is much cheaper than I had to pay to get this information when I needed it as a professor.

Also see A.F.W. Schimper (Willaim R. Fisher, English Translator). Revised and Edited by Percy Groom and Isaac Bayley Balfour. [1898]. Plant-geography: Upon a Physiological Basis. Original publisher: HR Englemann and Wheldon and Wesley, Ltd. Republished by Oxford Press, 1903. (Expensive, with lots of writing on global ecology.)

You probably know of some good ethnobotany works. I cannot immediately think of any that are global in nature and yet include plant specifics that are of use to us in the field.

To review the oldest uses for plants, go first for the non-selective toxins and physical uses, then for the most famous selective toxins (mostly nerve and muscle alkaloidal toxins, some glycosides). There are a lot of books on this--many reiterations of original writings--but they help put things into perspective--then try to link the information to taxonomy-based relationships.

In the plants you just mentioned, I see a medicine that predicts uses for other potential medicines in the same plant family, Lagenaria--this Cucurbitaceae family has reversed triterpenoids (cucurbitacins) that are highly toxic to the gut and so act as a laxative--like the related South and North American gourds and wild cucumbers. The next plant of course is a starch source (taro); what is important is that by viewing this species in an evolutionary tree, you will see that it resides alongside several other major contributors to the starch industry throughout history as well--the monocots Dioscoreaceae (Yam), Taccaceae (Tacca), Smilaceae (Smilax), Orchidaceae (Orchid corm), and some Liliaceae. The Typha we like to think of as a grass or reed, but this is really off evolutionarily speaking. Typha is very close to the Aridae suborder (primitive Arums)-Arales order (also known for their starchy rootstocks, with oxalates), and is even closer in evolutionary and ethnobotanic features to Sparganiaceae (swamp-bound burreeds). Since Cattail is more a fiber producer like Sparganium, than an edible rhizome/tuber producer like many Aridae, Liliidae (Lily subclass-Liliales order) and the other monocot suborders, I placed it next to the base of Aridae in my interpretation of this evolutionary tree.

As for Quercus, of the Witch Hazel Subclass-Hamamelidae, Fagales (beech trees) order, we have an impressive complex tannin producer--these polyphenolic tannins are larger, more primitive molecules than the simple flavonoid-derived tannins produced by higher subclasses/orders/families. The Quercus tannins work as non-selective toxins (and medicines to some), as dyes and tanning agents; historically, their best source were the various Oak galls. The tannin-rich feature in combination with the wood and starch produced by Quercus tells us that, regardless of where this takes place in the world, these qualities may have evolved for reasons primarily related to local herbivory features, and the problems with the fungi that often proliferate in wood in the natural settings.

To anyone intersted in really learning the chemistry of ethnobotany . . . if you want specifics on Plants and their Medicinal values, you can buy a ton of books on this. I say to my students to just pay for a few excellent books, then go for the other stuff whenever you need to have a more specialized book at hand. It is best to start with the following 3 to 6 books:

Trease and Evans' Pharmacognosy (ca. 1968-1972). This is more useful that the professional/pop cultural book on the same title: Tyler, Brady and Robbers' Pharmacognosy; but the older versions of this book are very good, especially pre-1980, but they are very hard to find. For a materia medica: buy David M R Culbreth's Materia Medica and Pharmacology, any edition, any year. For a basic textbook level ethnobotany book: Walter Lewis's Medical Botany is old (published 1976), but full of tables, with international and Native American ethnobotanical information and even some good physiology pathway information. DJ Mabberley's The Plant-Book 2ed, Cambridge Press, is a must for looking up anything around the world, by Genus and Family and some Orders. [Some people have recently requested my 1988/9 Ethnopharmacology course book, 1993 academic reprint--Plantae: the Evolutionary development of Natural Products in Plants, Algae and Fungi--which I know is occasionally found in the book dealers' lists (usually for much more than it should be sold at based on what it is lacking) Don't worry, I am revamping this book quite a bit, due to those sales, which will take me another few months to complete.]

Now about the learning/self-teaching experience: the thing to do is first look at the major chemicals groups present in each plant (or family) and its closest relatives and relate these to what you know about their uses by a specific culture and internationally. Look at general uses first, not specific toxin/drug based uses. Then determine/guess the purpose and selectivity of the chemical(s) involved as an evolutionary based component. Chemicals are first developed in a plant in order to better its own metabolic pathways, physique, and chances for tolerating the local growing conditions (the primary and secondary physiochemistry, physiographic and then biogeographic metabolic pathways emerge, like using flavonoids as a photosynthetic substitute when a reduced chlorophyll state is brought on by inadequate soil conditions). Then, a plant adds to the value of a particular pathway by using it to develop substances that improve its chances for continuation/survival in some ecologic fashion, i.e. sterols and fatty acids/oils become toxic, chemicals are released to prevent nearby plant growth, flavonoids add the edge when it somes to bee ecology, etc. Next, a plant family develops a method for merging pathwyas to produce complex and highly selective toxins; the Asteridae-Rubiales and relatives accomplished this and so developed the most toxic alkaloids in plants, including Strychnine, Vincristine, Yohimbine, Emetine/Cephaeline (Ipecac), and Cinchonine (Quinine), advanced hallucinogen/mind alteratives come from the adjacent Convolvulaceae (morning glory), and the alkaloidal steroid from Solanaceae (Nightshade family).

Finally, one needs to put all of this into perspective in some neodarwinist fashion: how does the chemical/property of a plant related to people and culture; does human impact change and/or improve the plant's own evolution or change and its chances for continued survival (this also includes human "deselection" processes of the natural product, the effects of removing it from being an essential part of the sociocultural setting--sometimes the plant can revert back to nature, sometimes we have changed it so much it can't).

At an ecological level, it is possible to develop a method for profiling plant features and uses, both modern and historical/anthropological, in terms of its chemistry and environment, its ecologic and domain/vegetation zone behaviors, and finally the human ecology feature of it all. I found there to be a statistical significance for example to the numbers of most important fiber-producing monocots, by genera, species and family, for members of the Sedges (Cyperaceae), Rush (Juncaceae), Liliaceae, etc., families, and the kinds of environments they are growing in. They tend to favor (though not exclusively) residing near hydrologic-defined regions, wateredges, marshes, runoff/rivulet areas, etc.. Seed oils have an impressive macrogeography related to their distribution on land surfaces with regard to long term climate history (especially as a latitude feature), each of which help define the chemistry, physical chemistry and stability of a seed oil.

I have also found that average annual temperature max and range also help to define the type of end products plants generate for simple isoprenes/terpenes (in temperate zones-the C5-C10-C15 terpene-derived essential oils of plants are exemplified by Umbel and Mint family members, C15 and less are fairly aromatic in temperate zones); plants from the same family and even the same Genus, in warmer climate settings (esp. Middle east), produce resin-like products with more heavy molecules (C10s, C15's, C20s, and various C25 complexes with these included--the heavier, the less evaporative potential and higher vaporizing temperatures)--in the final products that we can extract from these products, we have Commiphora's Myrrh, Boswellia's Frankincense, the various Leguminosae copals, Garcinia's gamboge, Xanthorrhoea's Gum Acaroid, Dracaena's dragon's blood resin, etc.--all solid resins with aromaticity but less synthesis-related energy taking place through lost due to vaporization. In Texas, the Juniperus changes its resin/essential oil content in accordance with climate and longitude features. In montane settings, elevation can be a determinant. The Middle eastern umbels produce resinoids (heavy essential oils/dry resin-like form) like Sumbul and Asafoetida (both Ferula sp.); compare these with the temperate-Mediterranean relatives Angelica, Lovage, Parlsey, Anise, etc.

A beautiful example of a selective toxin evolving with mankind is the canavamine in Canavalia (sword bean), and the cajaminose in Cajamus (pigeon pea); both have an important neodarwinian type of effect on people with HgS--the cause for sickle cell--by covalently binding to the active polar sites of the modified hemoglobins responsible for HgS chain formation and sickling, eating this starchy seed prevented HgS from becoming fatal at times to certain cultures at high risk for sickle cell inheritance.

In a New Mexico native ethnobotany project I was involved with around 1988/1990, I had to determine why some Amaranthus seeds were found in large amounts, but scattered, at the edge of an archaeological site, in particular places and in association with other waste/refuse materials. If you tabulate the chemistry and uses for Amaranthaceae, you find that the chemical traits borne by this family are responsible for the following features 1) it is edible (its most important use perhaps due to super high nutrition content), 2) it has anthocyanins and thus is an important dye source, 3) it has medicinal value as a vermifuge--the family has anthraquinones and oxalate crystals that are toxic to lower organisms in the gut and 4) its flavonoids in general can have numerous other medicinal potentials. The anthropologists felt the differences in this behavior with the plant seemed to indicate it had a use as a vermifuge (intestinal worms don't favor gut irritants and toxins).

The key to coming to a better understanding of all of the chemistry of ethnobotany is to first know the plant, its growth behaviors, its physiology, and its chemistry (chemotaxonomy at the visual/functional level). If you're really into this, you have to at least understand a plant's chemical potentials at an order-family level. Then relate all of this to how mankind benefited from all of the consequences of these developmental choice/natural selection chemical processes. And you really have to understand the genera-family-order-suborder chemical relationships when you look at where certain plants in an ethnobotany listing reside relative to each other in the taxonomic tree (using Thorne, Cronquist's and Dahlgren's classification systems).

People find it hard working from the bottom up when trying to understand plants. I tell them: do the opposite. During my early chemotax years as an alkaloid/terpenoid researcher, I taught in the plant labs at Portland State University, where here we had to teach the students to learn Genus species, common name, and then family, which takes quite some time. But there are just 250 (325 families if you include pre-angiosperms), about 40 (60) Orders, and 12 (20) suborders, you need to learn in order to have an exceptional understanding of the 9,000 to 10,000 most important plants (better even than many teachers in this field). And I believe you will more likely remember those 10,000 plants if you can relate them more to each other in terms of your areas of interest. The ethnobotany classes I later taught at the same university dealt with this order-family then genus-species approach (and I have other intellectual tricks of the trade up my sleeve as well).

[Brian Altonen]

In reference to your mention of De Candolle and Vavilov, I recommend:

Alphonse de Candolle (1778 – 1841). Origin of cultivated plants, 2ed. Oxford University. 1882. Reprint publ. by D. Appleton, 1884. Digitized May 12, 2006.

His plant biogeography classics:

Essai sur les propriétés médicales des plantes (1804).
Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis., (17 vols.),1824 to 1841, completed 1873.
Rapport sur les pommes de terre. (1822)
Considérations sur les forêts de la France. (1830)
Essai élémentaire de géographie botanique. (1810)
Projet d’une flore physico-géographique de la vallée de Léman. (1821).

In 1855 and 1862 “AdeC” (as Darwin referred to him) had as many as 20 biological regions recognized and reprinted in some of the later atlases. His most influential colleague for the time was probably Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (recall Lamarckian selection versus Darwin’s evolutionary theory). Like Louis Agassiz (ca. 1855), AdeC believed in a static world on which the landforms are produced by way of a slow erosion and decay process of the earth’s surface, due in large part to the Great Flood. In this scenario, he and his colleagues felt that the separation of the continents was responsible for the appearance of similar or related plants on different landmasses; they speculated that this was because the Flood eroded away the interconnections between these continents. These changes in the land surface of course meant less space to grow on, leading to the “Nature’s War” hypothesis, in which AdeC claimed that plants were "at war one with another" and that the outcomes of these wars are what lead to either their extinction or survival.

(See related Darwinian Letters at http://www.linnean.org/index.php?id=380; http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwin/search/advanced?query=author:"Candolle%2C+Alphonse+de"+addressee:"Candolle%2C+Alphonse+de"; http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-3917.html; and especially http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-3957.html for mention of the continental extensions change theory. Also: Ernst Mayer’s The Growth of Biologic Thought (1982); P. E. Pilet, “Augustin-Pyramus De Candolle”. Dictionary of Scientific Biography.. v. III: 43-45. 1971. Note: All plants with DC after the Genus species name were identified by De Candolle.

Nikolai I. Vavilov--Phytogeographer and Evolutionary geneticist, his original ideas were the Law of Homologous Series in Variation (1920) or Law of Homology which states that “characters found in one species are equal to those found in others depending on the historical reproductive relationships between the two” (one came from the other). In his concept of Centers of Origin (1926), he states that the “center of origin” for a given species is its area of greatest diversity (the center of greatest diversity = place of origin). He also wrote that there can be primary and secondary centers, and that crops can contain many wild relatives, with primary center being the source of the most dominant genes. Primary centers are small (2-3% of natural area where the plant is found), and are geographically distinct due to landform differences. They are regions where the wild plants served as sources for the original evolution of the plant and still bear members that possess the survival traits needed, should they be bred out of the domestic plant. Secondary areas are where these modified remove to, either naturally or by man. (See: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/Hort_306/text/lec04.pdf)

Let me add, I differ with this opinion because the genetic pool doesn't necessarily have to present itself at the primary center, or even be present for things to happen. Genetic changes can take place elsewhere, but close to the primary center, brought on by natural growing conditions.

So, these authors are good to note because I relate what these writers state to my own interpretation of the evolution of plant-based natural products.

De Candolle's and Vavilov's concepts relate to the theories of disease ecology proposed by EN Pavlovsky – natural focus for disease (1939, 1955) and AG Voronov (1967)'s improvement of Pavlovsky's claims, which I used to define how and why chemicals get produced by plants.

Pavlovski-Voronov proposed that there is a metafocus where individual factors responsible for health or disease exist, but do not necessarily result in the final disease taking its toll on plants and animal (as well as man). There can be an area where the host survives, another where the vector of the agent responsible for the disease survives, an area where the disease agent (microbe, bacterium, virus, etc.) itself survives, and in the case of human ecology interpretations, a place where man survives and comes in contact with the right conditions so as to experience this disease. The metafocus is comprise of these independent areas/regions (picture them as partially overlapping circles). The primary focus or disease nidus is where these circles overlap and so produce actual disease cases—that area of overlap is where all the right conditions for disease onset exist, resulting in the final production of an end product (the disease). For asiatic cholera, for example, the agent is vibrio cholera, the vector is the isopod bearing vibrio in its gut that can in turn infect human drinking water or come in contact with people in India, and the host which also capable of infecting us is the contaminated living fish or seafood we eat that either bear this vibrio or recently consumed its vector.

One could say that this highly interactive ecologic process is also how plants produce the final chemicals they need in order to survive their environmental and ecological conditions. There are genetic, environmental, and ecological predispositions that come together to set the stage for selection processes to take place, making those species with the right chemical features more likely to thrive or survive better than its neighbors. Mankind only helps this process along at times by circumventing a need for nature alone to make this final choice.


Now, about where to go to learn ethnobotany and the history of its related philosophies, the following are my recommended references:

For maps,

Johnston, Alexander Keith (1804–71), a Scottish cartographer and geographer royal of Scotland produced The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena (1848, with later reprints into the 1860s that contained more maps.

D. G. Frodin. Guide to Standard Floras of the World. Cambridge University Press, New York. 1985.

For more on this same time period, I recommend the classic Essai sur la géographie des plantes (1807) by Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Humboldt also had maps/drawings produced, that defined plant growing patterns/regions in particular settings defined by the primary surface features (i.e. mountainside plant ecopatterns, etc.). A more esoteric series by a geographer that focused on the interplay of man and the environment was started by Carl Ritter (1779)’s Die Erdkunde (19 vols) but it was never really completed.

I spent two winters reviewing the content of Msr. Pierre Pomet’s A Compleat History of Druggs. (translated in English 1710). Facsimile of 1712 ed. published in 1970 by P. Brummell. 1738 and 1743 editions are more extensive and comprehensive. Better renderings of this book came later, when the works of other important botanists for the time were added, namely Messrs. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, 1656-1708, and Nicolas Lémery, 1645-1715). For which see: A complete history of drugs. Written in French by Monsieur Pomet. ... To which is added what is farther observable on the same subject, from Mess. Lemery and Tournefort, divided into three classes, vegetable, animal, and mineral; ... by Pierre Pomet. I recommend this book because it provides detailed description of the regional variations in the most important food/drug sources in the world for the time, important knowledge to keep in mind when reviewing these products due to their exceptionally long history of use and very distinct regional differences in marketability and value regarding their uses.

Out of respect for some of other classics, I should mention:

Pedanius Dioscorides (ca. 40CE-90CE). De Materia Medica. First compiled ca. 65. Byzantine manuscript produced ca. AD 512 for Anicia Juliana [Juliana Anicia Codex (ca. 512 A.D.), Austrian National Library, Vienna]. Reprinted as The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides (1655/1933), John Goodyer translator, Robert T. Gunther, editor.

The highly popular and accessible John Gerard’s Herball (1597, ed. H. Walter Lack and translated by Martin Walters), reprinted by Dover and numerous others in recent decades) is okay, but I prefer JOHN PARKINSON’s Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris. Or A Garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre permitt to be noursed up: with A Kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, & fruites, for meate or sauce used with us, and An Orchard of the right orderinge planting & preferuing of them and their uses & all sorte of fruit bearing Trees and shrubbes fit for our Land together with vertues. London, Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young 1629. It is much more impressive and provides broader coverage of the plants. (Try to get it from NIH electronically, or in microfilm/CD form).

Mrs. Maude Grieve. A Modern Herbal. (2 vols). Penguin Books. 1984. Originally published in 1931. This has exceptionally long and detailed folklore and historical information, but is biased since it focuses a lot on the Western European interpretation of a plant’s history.

Daniel E. Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany (Timber Press. 1998) is extensive. Professor Moerman also has his information in “A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants”, but exploring this database is somewhat tedious, piecemeal and can be frustrating at times due to the brevity of much of the information. See University of Michigan-Dearborn’s http://herb.umd.umich.edu/.

Virgil Vogel’s American Indian Medicine (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970) is helpful because it summarizes much of the information gathered, mostly from the original sources used involving journals and diaries kept by trappers, explorers, etc.. However, this kind of information is where medical philosophy has to really be taken into consideration—the uses are briefly mentioned in passing and are not differentiated into whether or not they were of metaphysical origination (sacred or spiritual remedies), or folklore/legend/philosophical and/or morphologically (phytognomics/doctrine of signatures) versus toxicity/chemicals-based. To understand this, you have to review the original books or information sources so cited, and read up on the culture and its numerous branches, past and present, and then look at the actual plant and try to draw your own insights into why a particular plant was used.

The Wealth of India -- An Encyclopedia of India's Raw Material Resources (11 vols.) merges Indian tradition with western European science and natural history knowledge. Legend-based origins are not in this book. Wildcrafting, agricultural and scientific information is plentiful. There are several 2 and 3 volume series out there on the cultural history of products from this region; all of the info very regionally-based within India. (For traditional Ayurvedics, turn to the classics and the various contemporary medical journals on this topic.)

The best Unaniism/Middle Eastern cultural medical sources for plant/non-botanical medicine are produced by Hamdard Press (has New Delhi and Pakistanian offices). These books and journals cover the Middle Eastern/Islamic, esp. Iranian/Iraqian, remedies extensively, physically, metaphysically, and philosophically.

Melinda S. Meade and Robert J. Earickson’s Medical Geography, Second Edition (2000), along with Meade’s "Medical Geography as Human Ecology: The Dimension of Population Movement." Geographical Review 67(4) October 1977: 383.


When researching a particular plant’s use, since you really need to get the plant identification correct, especially the Genus species Taxonomist/Identifier if a science/anthropology publication is a goal (examples of this nomenclature-- Taraxacum officinalis L. (dandelion), and Achillea millefolium L. (yarrow); the “L.” refers to Linneaus), go the any standard botanical name book still being used. If a pre-1970s reference source gives you just Genus species, you may have to look it up to see if the name has been changed or updated since the publication date (another reason I stick with genera as a phytochemist, until the species name also has to be addressed). This does not mean that you cannot trust a name given in the writings unless it is properly cited, it just means you may need to check the citation to look to see if there are similar plants growing in the region you are researching, just in case the true medicinal plant is a close relative and has a more exact botanical name. For example, during my work on chiclé gum latex of Aztec-Mayan culture, to get the full history I had to look up three genera in the US and Panamanian government documents—Manilkara, Achras and Sapota. As for the number of possible full botanic names: Manilkara zapota (L.) van Royen (chiclé,); M. zapotilla (Jacq.) Gilly, Manilkara achras (Mill.) Fosberg, Achras zapota (L.), Sapota achras Mill., Sapota zapotilla (Jacq.) Coville. (for which see: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/nexus/manilkara_zapota_nex.html). Likewise, for my work on the cancer drug producer Calocedrus decurrens (Torr.) Florin, of Pacific Coast Indian ethnobotany history, this was originally referred to as Libocedrus decurrens Torr. When I began this work back in the 1980s. (It produces the cancer drug epipodophyllotoxin (Etoposide/TM) and several derivatives in its inner bark.)

Aside from my mention of DJ Mabberly’s Plant-Book, 2ed. in the previous reply to Matt’s question, there are two other very important dictionaries on plants that I use for my ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology research:

Uphof. J. C. Th. Dictionary of Economic Plants. Weinheim 1959.
Usher. G. A Dictionary of Plants Used by Man. Constable 1974.

I also have found several 19th century medical dictionaries to be useful for this work, especially when it comes to looking up medicines cited by their professional/pharmacal names: Joseph Thomas’s (1811-91) A comprehensive medical dictionary (ca. 1840-1850) and Robley Dunglison's Medical Dictionary (ca. 1864). In anthropological studies, I use these sources to obtain background information, confirm plant identities, and match an herbal medicine to its potential uses as cited in the cultural writings.

For making Predictions of Plant Ecological Behavior and Chemistry, and perhaps a little bit of help on predicting their use according to their ecologic setting, see:

F. I. Woodward. Climate and plant distribution. Cambridge University Press, 1987

Cherrill, A. J., C. McClean, P. Watson, K. Tucker, S. P. Rushton, and R. Sanderson. 1995. Predicting the distributions of plant species at the regional scale: a hierarchical matrix model. Landscape Ecology 10:197-207. Plant community types in England were investigated with the goal of developing a database that could be used to predict or model plant product expectations at four ecological levels (landscape, land cover type, community, species); purpose was to develop a means for possibly predicting plant species distribution behaviors based on land features.

For Links to informative web-based information sources and search tools, go to:
http://www.herbs.org/links/linksethno.htm