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ETHNOBOTANY

Ethnobotany is considered as 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 leads us to symbolic relationships like faith, taboo, worship and several other
magico-relegious aspects. According to Jain and Mithra (1990)- it is defined as “The total natural
and traditional relationship and the interaction between man and his surrounding plant wealth”

Categories

 Ethnobotany of certain ethnically distinct primitive or otherwise interesting human societies

 Ethnobotany of specific geographical region
 Ethnobotany of particular utility group of plants
 Ethnobotany of a particular plant, genus or family
 Ethnobotanical aspects of conservation and management of plant resources
 Tools appliances, articles of personal adornment which have been used since time
immemorial
 Study of mythological association or faith in plants among the local folks
 Study of local names and their etymology

Contributions of SK Jain to ethnobotany

 Father of Indian Ethnobotany

 Served BSI for nearly 3 decades and was its director for 7 years.
 recipient of the prestigious Pitambar Pant National Environment fellowship of the
government of India
 Initiated and organised many broad-based ethnobotanical studies in several parts of the
country and directed all India coordinated research projects in endangered species and
ethnobotany.
 Founded the Society of Ethnobotanists and an international commission on ethnobotany.
 Chief editor of Ethnobotany, the only exclusive journal on this subject. His research work
was mainly concentrated on grasses, orchids, floristic studies, endangered species, medicinal
plants, ethnobotany and economic botany.
 He was awarded ‘Emeritus Scientist’ of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for
his project on Comparative and Deductive Studies in Ethnobotany. This work resulted in his
famous book ‘Dictionary of Indian Folk Medicine and Ethnobotany’, which was presented as
evidence in US courts to win India the Turmeric patent.
 Organized the 4thISE International Congress of Ethnobiology at NBRI, Lucknow. This was one
of the most successful Congresses and was well attended by over 300 delegates including 82
foreign ethnobotanists from various parts of the world

Sources of ethnobotany

Western Sources (Written Tradition)

People have been interested in plants for their medicinal properties for hundreds of
centuries. The first records of plants used for medicinal purposes in the Western tradition appear in
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ancient Egypt, copies of which date to 1550 B.C, and a tablet listing physician’s prescriptions, dated
to about 3,000 B.C. Systematic investigation of plants for their medicinal uses has a long history in
the West, built upon Greek, Roman and Islamic foundations. In this tradition, the first work was
Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, whose date of compilation has been estimated between 64 through
77 AD. Dioscorides’ work became the authoritative on medicinal plants and the infant science of folk
pharmacology in the West for the next 1,500 years that followed.

Dioscorides was the first to attempt to systematize all plant knowledge known at the time to
the Greek world. While his mode of organization was to group medicinal remedies by form and
origin of the illness and/or the remedy itself rather than by a botanical, zoological or mineralogical
nomenclature,

In ancient China the first text of medicinal plants was compiled purportedly by Emperor
Shen Nung around 2,700 B.C, the Pen T'sao Ching. Similarly, the Rig Vedas and Ayurvedic medicine,
compiled in ancient India, include information on many plants used medicinally for healing.
Ayurvedic medicine is thought to date back at least 5,000 - 10,000 years, and the Rig Veda around
2500 B.C. or earlier. Other medicinal traditions that employ medicinal plants, rooted in Buddhism,
are recorded in palm-leaf manuscripts.

Oral Tradition

The medicinal knowledge and the quest for healing illnesses is common to all cultures, the written
texts on medicinal plant knowledge and healing only demonstrate how specialized such knowledge
had become. A prerequisite to practicing medicine in complex societies was and continues to be
literacy, specialized training and education.

In contrast, the medicinal knowledge of non-literate groups was and continues to be

transmitted through oral tradition, in the context of apprenticeship to a ritual practitioner or healer,
a village shaman, who collects and prepares remedies for ill children or other household members.

Age of Discovery

As early as the reports from Marco Polo about the faraway “spice islands”, Europeans’
interest in exotic and commercially valuable plants from elsewhere was piqued. However, the
European discovery of the New World at the end of the 15th century, and the subsequent political
and economic expansion, exponentially increased knowledge of the known world and the natural
phenomena occupying that world. Explorations in the New World brought back to Europe many
economically and medicinally useful plants, including new foods, medicines, construction materials
(hardwoods), and items of commerce (dyes, tobacco, etc.). The establishment of botanical gardens
and publication of herbals and botanical treatises in Renaissance Europe began in the sixteenth
century and spread rapidly. This movement of economically useful plants worldwide is often
referred to as the Columbian Exchange.
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GENERAL ETHNOBOTANICAL TECHNIQUES

Any ethnobotanical enquiry into the traditional botanical knowledge (TBK) of extant peoples is
dependent on the effective application of a number of key anthropological and botanical
methodologies. For example, anthropological field techniques including participant observation and
structured surveys permit the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data related to plant
use and subsistence practices.

Anthropological Field Methods

In most cases, the successful collection of anthropological data requires a close and sustained
observation of a people, which can be achieved only by long-term participation in local customs and
daily life. Although a range of data collection techniques are now available, anthropological studies
remain inherently difficult. For the study of people involves a number of unique practical, cultural
and ethical considerations, which prevent social scientists from designing the type of controlled,
replicable experiment so favoured by natural scientists. This is partly because of the influence of
uncontrollable variables such as an individual’s personality and decision-making powers.

Qualitative and quantitative approaches to anthropological study

During the course of participatory ethnobotanical studies, information is gathered from selected
participants, primarily through observation, casual conversation and the use of various types of
analytical tool. Informal or qualitative methods such as open-ended interviews, generally yield
responses which can be used in compiling general ethnographic accounts of a community and its
culture. More systematic or structured methods (that is formal or quantitative methods) yield data
which may be used to calculate a range of numerical indices such as the relative usefulness of a
given plant species. Ethnobotanists are ending increasingly, that a combination of qualitative and
quantitative methods is proving most useful in the collection of data which are both accurate and
complete.

Qualitative approach Quantitative approach

Methods Methods
Open-ended and semi-structured interviews Structured interviews and questionnaires ,
‘Hands on’ learning of traditional techniques Free-listing
Pile-sorting and preference ranking—including
triadic and paired comparisons
Systematic surveys—e.g. of transects or hectare
plots
Applications Applications
Reveal a range and depth of information which is Facilitates the cross-verification of data both
difficult to elicit using more formal methods within and between informants
Facilitate the development of informal Facilitates the numerical evaluation of factors
relationships between local and external such as the use-value or relative economic
participants Provide practical experience of using importance of a given species
traditional methods Facilitates the selection of participants who are
particularly knowledgeable in certain areas
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Quantitative ethnobotany—the concept of use-values

Quantitative method allows the calculation of the use-value for a given species, which can be
compared statistically with use-values of other species. In this way it should be possible to identify
any species which are perceived as being particularly useful.
CALCULATING THE USE-VALUE (UV) FOR A GIVEN PLANT SPECIES
Informants were asked to identify the nature and uses of each plant occurring within a series of 1 ha
forest plots. While many different uses of plants were defined by local informants, it can be divided
into five broad categories: 'edible', 'construction', 'medicinal' and 'technology and crafts'. Each infor -
mant was then asked about the uses of certain plants in order to determine the number and range
of uses for each species. In each case, a single 'event’ is defined as the process of asking a single
informant on 1 day, about the uses of a given plant species. Using this method, the information from
each informant was used to produce, for each plant species, a data set similar to that shown below:

Construct Food Medicinal Technology Total (Uis)

Event 1 0 0 1 0 1
Event 2 1 1 2 1 5
Event 3 0 0 1 0 1
Total 1 1 4 1 7 (∑ Uis )
Mean 0.333 0.333 1.333 0.333 2.333 (UVis)

Data from each informant were then used to calculate the mean number of uses of a given plant
species. In this way inconsistencies in the information given are taken into consideration, and the
overall mean value UVjs represents the mean number of all uses of a given plant species (s), as
recognised by a single informant (i). This information is then used to calculate the overall use-value
for this species (UVs) based on the information from the total number of informants using the
following equation:
UVs = Σ UV is /i s

where:
UVs = the overall use-value of species s
UVis = the use-value of species s as determined by informant
is = total number of informants interviewed for species s