Ethnobotany and Geography

Features of Ethnobotany of Africa

• It is a large continent with many different ethnic groups who have very different cultures and uses of plants

• The continent is geographically very diverse, ranging from bare deserts to lush tropical rain forests. Ethnobotanical use of plants reflects the diversity of habitat, and there is correspondingly low use of plants in the desert regions and great use of plants in the rain forests

• Humans originated in Africa. Therefore we should see the oldest relationships between plants and people in Africa

Natural vegetationof Africa

Ethnosystematics

• Ethnosystematics (folk knowledge of botanical classification – John Kokwaro) is highly developed in Africa because many plants are used in African ethnomedicine and because Africa is rich in dialects and languages due to the large number of ethnic groups.

• Each group has names for the plants it uses and for describing the relationships of those plants.

African Concepts of Disease

1. Naturally caused diseases – these are due to tangible material that affects the body’s organs. Such natural diseases are regarded as minor or normal because they can be described by the patient and treated by the healer in strictly physical terms.

African Concepts of Disease

2. Acute or severe diseases – the common belief (fear) is that as soon as a disease becomes acute or severe, it is due to unnatural causes or intangible forces. This implies that a hostile person is using supernatural powers against the patient or the victim may have transgressed the moral code and incurred the wrath of ancestors. These diseases are characterized as being complicated and serious. They usually have persistent illness. Bewitched or cursed persons require special types of treatment, medicine, and traditional doctors.

Traditional African Medical Practitioners

1. Herbalists usually use plants to treat patients.

2. Diviners are also herbalists but use divinatory procedures for treatment.

3. Spiritualists hardly use plants at all for treatment.

4. Great therapists utter prayers, incantations, and invocations

Painting of an Herbalist

Traditional Herbalist Seybatou Hamdy of Dakar, Senegal

Sangoma – South African Diviner/Great Threapist

Traditional African Medical Practitioners

5. Traditional midwives may be obstetricians, herbalists, gynecologists, or pediatricians. They provide health care before, during, and after birth, and also care for newborn infants and young children.

6. Traditional surgeons use special knives, sharpened and tempered according to esoteric procedures, for circumcisions and excisions. Cassava leaves, liquid from snails, and various other ingredients are used as agents to prevent excessive bleeding.

7. Traditional psychiatrists deal with a patients socioreligious antecedents, using a series of rites, that include chants, incantations, and ritual dances, and in which music is played using particular musical instruments.

Preparation and Dispensing of Drugs

• The part of the plant used in preparing the drug depends on the structure of the plant. It is common to use the bark or roots of trees and shrubs. The Swahili name for herbal medicine is miti shamba meaning “medicine from the tree.”

• With small plants and herbs, usually the leaves or the whole plant is used.

Preparation and Dispensing of Drugs

• Traditional African medicine is usually limited in that an extract from one plant is used at a time. Only occasionally is an infusion with extracts from two or more plant species given to a patient. This is in contrast to South America where many medicines have mixtures of several species.

Planting Ocimum kilimandscharicum – Kakamega forest, Kenya

Harvesting Ocimum kilimandscharicum – Kakamega forest, Kenya

Preparation of Plant Drugs in Africa

1. Boiling – especially for roots and bark of trees and shrubs. The decoction is taken orally or used for bathing depending on the disease.

2. Soaking in cold water is generally used with crushed leaves or small herbs. The concoction is used as above.

3. Burning is used with leaves and small herbs. The ash can be licked, rubbed onto a wound, soaked in water and drunk or gargled.

Preparation of Plant Drugs in Africa

4. Chewing is a first-aid method of preparing a drug, especially for treatment of snakebite, stomach disorders, or mouth and throat ailments.

5. Heating or roasting is usually employed in preparing succulent leaves or other plant parts for a poultice.

6. Crushing or pounding normally precedes other methods such as boiling, soaking or burning. Crushed material may be applied directly to a wound, usually after being mixed with some kind of oil

Poultice of Poke LeavesPhytolaca americana

Methods of Consumption of Plant Medicines

• Aromatic drugs for treating influenza or similar diseases are usually taken in the form of steam.

• Other drugs are often taken with food to make them more palatable. Usually they are taken with liquid foods – pastoral tribes take drugs with milk, other groups use soup, porridge (especially from African millet flour Eleusine coracana), honey, blood, and various kinds of local beers.

The Ordeal Bean of Calabar

The Calabar region - circled below

The Calabar Bean – Physostigma venenosum

Member of the Egbo Society

Trial by Esere or the Ordeal Bean

• The Efik of Nigeria believed the bean possessed the power to reveal and destroy witches. The accused witch was made to undergo a trial by ordeal, drinking water to which had been added eight mashed ordeal beans. The poison acted rapidly; the accused's mouth would shake and the mucosal membranes discharge. If the accused could raise his right arm and regurgitate (very unlikely), then the person was considered innocent of witchcraft. If not, the witch died a horrible death from paralytic asphyxia.

The Calabar Bean

Medicines from Calabar Bean

• Physostigmine is used to treat certain types of glaucoma

• Derivatives neostigmine and pyridostigmine are used for myasthenia gravis

• The methyl carbamate family of insecticides came from ordeal bean research

Ethnobotany of North America

Ethnobotany of North America

Food Production in Pacific Northwest – Salmon Nation

• At one time people were thought to be almost exclusively hunter-gatherers

• Tobacco only domesticated plant in cultivation• But many other plants were harvested and

managed to increase growth• Lowland meadows were commonly burned to

encourage growth of edible camas lilies (Camassia sp. – F. Liliaceae)

Nancy Turner – University of Victoria

Field of Camas lilies - Oregon

Camas lily flower –Camassia esculenta

Nez Perce Woman with Harvest of Camas bulbs ~ 1900

Modern Harvest and Cooking of Camas – British Columbia

Management of Food Plants

• Mountainsides and upland meadows were also burned periodically to encourage the production of berries such as thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus – F. Rosaceae), blackcap Rubus leucodermis, and blueberries and huckleberries (Vaccinium sp. - F. Ericaceae the heaths)

Thimbleberry – Rubus parviflorus

Blackcap berries – Rubus leucodermis

Blueberry – Vaccinium corymbosum

Red huckleberry – Vaccinium parviflorum (Ericaceae)

Management of Food Plants

• Species with edible underground parts such as tiger lily Lilium columbianum, yellow avalanche lily Erythronium grandiflorum, and spring beauty (the “Indian potato”) Claytonea lanceolata (F. Portulacaceae – the purslanes), were also encouraged by periodic burning

Tiger lily –Lilium columbianum

Avalanche lily – Erythronium grandiflorum

Western Spring beauty – Claytonia lanceolata

Management of Food Plants

• Foods such as springbank clover rhizomes (Trifolium wormskioldii – F. Fabaceae), and Pacific silverweed roots (Potentilla anserina subsp. pacifica F. Rosaceae) on the coast, and interior plants such as spring beauty, yellow avalanche lily, and bitterroot Lewisia rediviva (F. Portulacaceae), were all harvested intensively from the same digging grounds over many years

Springbank clover - Trifolium wormskioldii

Pacific silverweed – Potentilla anserina subsp. pacifica

Bitterroot – Lewisia redivia