II.

Ethnobotany in History

Ethnobotany is part of an ancient tradition of seeking information about beneficial plants from other cultures. The rulers of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome encouraged ethnobotanical exploration. In ad 77 Roman physician Pedanius Dioscorides published De Materia Medica, a compilation of botanical information gathered on his travels with the Roman armies. This book was used as a medical text until the Middle Ages.

In the 18th century, Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish biologist who invented the modern system of botanical classification, traveled to Saamiland to study the Saami people. He lived with the people as a member of their tribe, wearing their clothes, sharing their food, and studying the plants they used. In the 19th century, British explorer and ethnobotanist Richard Spruce spent 17 years in the Amazon and Andes regions of South America. He discovered hundreds of new plant species and conducted important research on plants used as hallucinogens for religious purposes by Amazonian tribes. Spruce also collected specimens of the cinchona tree that were later used to establish quinine plantations in Southeast Asia.

Richard Evans Schultes, former director emeritus of the Harvard Botanical Museum, was the dominant figure in ethnobotany in the latter half of the 20th century. Schultes was an authority on such useful plants as coca, palms, orchids, and rubber. Beginning in the 1930s Schultes conducted research among Native American tribes in North, Central, and South America. His studies of the mushroom used by the Mazatec peoples of southern Mexico led to the development of the heart drug Visken.