Ethnobotany

Lore & Background

The idea of ethnobotany was first proposed by early 20th century botanist John William Harshberger, who conducted research in Mexico and Pennsylvania. However, the practice has earlier origins in the first century AD when Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides wrote De Materia Medica, detailing medical and culinary properties of over 600 Mediterranean plants based on his travels through the Roman empire. European botanical knowledge expanded dramatically after the discovery of the New World, with crops like potatoes, peanuts, avocados, and tomatoes entering knowledge. French explorer Jacques Cartier learned a cure for scurvy—a tea made from coniferous tree needles—from an Iroquois tribe.

During the medieval period, ethnobotanical studies were often connected with monasticism, with botanical knowledge kept in physic gardens attached to hospitals and religious buildings. In 1732, Carl Linnaeus carried out a research expedition in Scandinavia that was primarily a natural history survey, with limited ethnobotanical focus. The Age of Enlightenment saw economic botanical exploration by Alexander von Humboldt and James Cook's voyages. Major botanical gardens like the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1759) sent gardener-botanist explorers to collect plants. Later, expeditions such as Lewis and Clark's recorded both plants and indigenous uses, and Edward Palmer collected material culture and botanical specimens from the North American West and Mexico from the 1860s to the 1890s.

The first modern ethnobotanical work is considered Leopold Glück's 1896 study of traditional medical uses of plants by rural people in Bosnia. In the 20th century, scholars like Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Frank Cushing, Keewaydinoquay Peschel, and the team of Wilfred Robbins, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Freire-Marreco analyzed indigenous plant uses. Early ethnobotanical studies suffered from poor collaboration between botanists and anthropologists, but by the early 20th century, better cooperation led to reliable cross-disciplinary data. Richard Evans Schultes, often called the 'father of ethnobotany,' defined the discipline as 'investigating plants used by primitive societies in various parts of the world.'

Reader's Guide

Ethnobotany's significance lies in bridging natural and social sciences to document and apply traditional plant knowledge. The field has evolved from raw data compilation to a methodologically rigorous academic discipline requiring botanical, anthropological, and linguistic training. A 2026 study analyzing over 41,000 traditional Chinese medical recipes combined with nuclear receptor profiling demonstrated how ethnobotanical knowledge can inform modern pharmacological research, specifically identifying plant fractions modulating glucocorticoid receptor activity. The field now addresses complex issues of intellectual property rights and equitable benefit-sharing from traditional knowledge use.

Mark Plotkin, who studied at Harvard University, the Yale School of Forestry, and Tufts University, contributed books including Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (1994) and a handbook for the Tirio people of Suriname detailing their medicinal plants. He advocated combining best aspects of all medical systems. The field recognizes that native healers are often reluctant to share knowledge with outsiders; Schultes apprenticed himself to an Amazonian shaman, and visiting acupuncturists accessed levels of Mayan medicine by offering something in exchange. James W. Herrick's work Iroquois Medical Ethnobotany (1995) explains that understanding herbal medicines in traditional Iroquois cultures is rooted in a strong cosmological belief system.

Did You Know?

• The first modern ethnobotanical work is considered Leopold Glück's 1896 study of traditional medical uses of plants by rural people in Bosnia.

Roots in Antiquity and the Birth of a Discipline

Ethnobotany sits at the crossroads of natural and social sciences, examining how human communities have historically used, managed, and perceived the plants around them. The discipline draws on botany, anthropology, ecology, and chemistry to document the full spectrum of plant-related customs—ranging from medicine and food to religious rituals, intoxicants, building materials, fuels, and clothing. While the formal idea of ethnobotany was first proposed by the early twentieth-century botanist John William Harshberger, who conducted fieldwork across North Africa, Mexico, Scandinavia, and Pennsylvania, the roots of the practice stretch much further back. In the first century AD, the Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides composed De Materia Medica, an extensive botanical text cataloguing the medical and culinary properties of more than six hundred Mediterranean plants. His travels through Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Petra gave him firsthand knowledge of local flora and their practical applications, making his work a remarkable precursor to the field. It was not until Richard Evans Schultes ventured into the Amazon that ethnobotany gained widespread recognition as a distinct science, a contribution that earned him the enduring title of its father.

Monastic Gardens and the New World Windfall

During the medieval period, the study of plants and their uses was largely embedded in monastic life. Botanical knowledge was cultivated and preserved within physic gardens attached to hospitals and religious institutions, where the emphasis was squarely on practical applications—cooking and healing—rather than on the cultural or ethnographic dimensions that a modern anthropologist would bring to the analysis. The ethnographic element simply was not a concern of that era. A dramatic expansion of European botanical understanding followed the discovery of the New World, as waves of previously unknown plants arrived from the Americas. Crops such as potatoes, peanuts, avocados, and tomatoes transformed diets and economies across the Old World. One of the most striking early examples of cross-cultural plant knowledge transfer involved the French explorer Jacques Cartier, who learned from a local Iroquois tribe that a tea brewed from the needles of a coniferous tree—most likely spruce—could cure scurvy, a devastating affliction among European sailors. This episode illustrates how indigenous botanical expertise could directly address problems that European medicine had yet to solve.

Enlightenment Expeditions and the Colonial Turn

The Age of Enlightenment brought a surge of economic botanical exploration. In 1732, Carl Linnaeus led a research expedition through Scandinavia in which he specifically asked the Sami people about their ethnological uses of local plants—an early example of systematic inquiry into indigenous plant knowledge. Alexander von Humboldt gathered extensive data from the New World, while James Cook's voyages returned to Europe with collections and detailed information on South Pacific flora. Major botanical gardens were established during this period, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew among them in 1759, and their directors dispatched gardener-botanist explorers to collect and catalogue specimens. As the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, the character of these expeditions shifted. Missions such as that of Lewis and Clark now carried more explicitly colonial aims, recording not only the plants encountered but also the ways the peoples they met used them. Edward Palmer, working from the 1860s through the 1890s, collected both material culture artifacts and botanical specimens from communities in the Great Basin and Mexico. Through this cumulative body of research, the subfield of aboriginal botany took shape, encompassing the full range of plant uses by indigenous peoples for food, medicine, textiles, and ornaments.

From Field Notes to Pharmacology: The Modern Field

The transition to modern academic ethnobotany was marked by a fundamental methodological shift. In the late nineteenth century, the German physician Leopold Glück, working in Sarajevo, published what is regarded as the first modern ethnobotanical study: his 1896 account of how rural Bosnian communities employed plants for traditional medicine, examined from the emic, or insider, perspective. Throughout the twentieth century, scholars such as Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Frank Cushing, Keewaydinoquay Peschel, and the collaborative team of Wilfred Robbins, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Freire-Marreco continued this indigenous-centered approach. Early in the field's development, however, botanists and anthropologists often worked in parallel rather than together—botanists fixated on species identification while anthropologists treated scientific plant details superficially. By the early twentieth century, genuine cross-disciplinary collaboration produced far more reliable data. Since Schultes' era, the discipline has moved well beyond documentation into applied domains, especially pharmaceutical development. A 2026 study analyzed over 41,000 traditional Chinese medical recipes, pairing them with nuclear receptor profiling to identify plant fractions that modulate glucocorticoid receptor activity. The field now also grapples with intellectual property rights and equitable benefit-sharing for traditional knowledge holders.