3 Metabolites

Each person in our group chose specific metabolites to further research. I chose capsaicin, gingerol, and curcumin. I came up with a series of questions to help me research these metabolites. Perhaps our group will edit these and include them in our research questions.

What families of plants commonly contain these metabolites? 

What environmental factors contribute to the production of these metabolites?

What medicinal properties are found in these metabolites? What illnesses are treated with these metabolites? Which cultures use these metabolites for medicine?

My group members will be researching these metabolites.

Peter- Ergotomine, Menthol, Allicin.
Leisa- Caffeine, Theobromine, DMT.

Hamilton Library Meeting

Today our group is meeting in a conference room at Hamilton Library. We are looking at our learning objectives, possibly revising them, and discussing our research. So far I have been reading some of the articles posted on Laulima such as The Natural History of Medicinal Plants by Judith Sumner. I have also looked at few plants families such as Asteraceae and Malvaceae in Doctor Duke's online database. Peter is reading Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective by Ann McElroy and Patrick K. Townsend. Lisa is reading Plant Systematics A Phylogenetic Approach by Judd, Campbell, Kellog, Stevens and Donoghue.

Learning Objectives Framework

We have begun working on our learning objectives. Leisa has created a google doc and added some learning objectives that were products of what we discussed in class. I have begun reading The Natural History of Medicinal Plants by Judith Sumner and it inspired me to add a few other LOs. These will be narrowed down to 4 LOs.

Pods
PBL 3

Secondary Metabolites

Learning Objectives

Explore the reasoning by which scientists classify secondary metabolites.

Explore environmental pressures that may cause production of secondary metabolites.

Examine similar secondary metabolites and their origin.

Understand what a secondary metabolite is and where it comes from.

Examine plant families and the relationship of plants within those families.

At which taxon do similarities in secondary metabolites decline.

PBL Problem 3

Secondary Metabolite Functions

Life on earth is more or less unified in having a limited set of metabolic pathways that are used to produce primary metabolites from just a few elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Secondary metabolites are constructed from primary metabolites but are more diverse and have different functions.

For each category of secondary metabolite, what are examples of specific chemicals from plants that are used medicinally? Do all the plants seem to have the same secondary metabolites or are they clustered? (e.g. , Is there an evolutionary pattern in genera, families, orders?) If there is clustering, what could this mean?

Presentation Observations

The shoots broke up their presentation into three sections, each researched and presented by a different partner.

They laid out a comparison of health trends.
Keys to good health
Nigeria: Staying warm. Disease based off of becoming too cold.
India: Maintaining an even balance in body temperature based off of hot and cold foods. Disease caused by too much heat or too much cold. Often the result of eating too many hot foods or too many cold foods.
Kenya: Keeping worms healthy, keeps the body healthy. Accept western medicine for young children who cannot handle the worms yet.

The roots focused on how non-traditional treatment is interacting with traditional treatment.
Mayans: Wind carries spirits. Focus for diagnoses is on reading pulse. Some diseases there do not have equivalents in modern medicine and could only be described as mental illness.
Chumash Indians: hunter/gatherer nomadic society. Use medicine within their own home often as opposed to seeing a healer. Smoke white sage and tobacco for sacred dreams. They are wary of biomedical doctors, occasionally go to chinese medicine doctors or Mexican healers. Kenya: Issue with western medicine is that it tries to contain things to much. Organs are not worms, worms live within the organs. If the worms are not balanced, disease is caused.

Outside View

Working on the problem has made me wonder how people living in Hawaii view disease and medicine. I know there is a lot of influence from the mainland and modern medicine is quite common here, however I would imagine that in more rural parts of the islands people have other views. I would be curious to see what some of the older, more authentic Hawaiien medicinal practices are. Do people in some parts of the island view disease in a different way? Do people treat disease in a different way? Do people in rural areas use more natural plant medicine as opposed to synthesized medicine? Are the current trends pushing these practices away? Are people losing information on older techniques that prevent disease? These are some questions I have pondered during my work on this weeks problem.

Power Point

Today we are doing some last minute assembling of our power point. I am going through my notes and out google doc to see what I can contribute to the presentation. I was assigned the Qollahuayan Indians, So I am mostly filling out information about this group. I am also contributing some definitions from wikipedia to help spell out the problem and define some of the terms used in the articles.

Here are some examples of how I am applying my notes and research to the problem and the questions in the powerpoint.

For each culture, how is dichotomy and the necessity for balance expressed?
For this section I have defined the Qollahuayan explanatory model:
For the Qollahuayans the necessity for balance is expressed through an ongoing cycle of body fluids including fat, bile, milk, semen, and by-products: feces, urine and sweat. The fluids are processed in the Sonco(heart) and must be released into nature in order to keep the cycle of health going. They focus less on keeping a balance in their body and more on continuing the cycle of fluid exchange with the surrounding environment.

Illustrate how the world views of cultures are integrated with their body concepts.
Centrifugal organs separate/remove/distribute nutrients and toxins.  Blood and urine quality, determined by pulse and coloration of urine samples. 


We will apply what we learn about world views, explanatory models of disease, and body concepts in order to evaluate the reasons that people within specific cultures choose particular plant medicines.  The Qollahuayans view their herbal medicine as an exchange of ingredients between the earth and the body. Qollohuayan herbalists classify blood based on a system of hold, cold, wet, and dry. Plants and diseases are also given a temperature and/or moisture classification and are matched up accordingly. Plants are also classified and chosen based off of how they affect the flow of fluids throughout the body.


Vocabulary:

Disease- A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism.

Etiology- the study of causation or origination

Prognosis- a medical term to describe the likely outcome of an illness.

biomedical- of, relating to, or involving biological, medical, and physical science.

dichotomy- A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts.

Centripetal-  is a force that makes a body follow a curved path: it is always directed orthogonal to the velocity of the body, toward the instantaneous center of curvature of the path.

Centrifugal- Centrifugal force represents the effects of inertia that arise in connection with rotation and which are experienced as an outward force away from the center of rotation.

Qollahuayan terms:

Sonco - Heart. Center for body fluid processing. 

Allyu - Vertical triangular land mass in which Qollohuayan communities live.

Yawar- Blood

Wira - Fat

I have also used some categories which Leisa made to sum up some of the information about Qollahuayans as it applies to our problem: 

Disease Etiology: Disease is caused by environmental change to the mountain system or problems with the body fluid cycle described by hot, cold, wet and dry conditions.

Diagnoses: Diseases are diagnosed based off of pulse readings and urine analyzation.

Treatments: Offerings of blood, fat and coca are made to the mountain to maintain good health. Herbalists treat disease with herbs classified as hot, cold, wet or dry and herbs that relate to specific body fluids.

Pathophysiology of the illness: People need the cycle of fluids to continue. The cycle of fluids in the body relates to the topographical features of the mountain.

Article Summary

Here is my summary of the article: Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts: ATopographical-Hydraulic Model of Physiology.
 My summary aims shed light on the question: How do the Qollahuayan people of Nifiokorin, Kaata, and Apacheta’s view of hydrollic mountain systems relate to their view of body fluid cycles?

The Qollahuayan people span over nine allyus in the Andes mountains. Allyus are triangle land masses which contain small communities. The article focuses on three communities Nifiokorin, Kaata, and Apacheta to describe the Qollahuayan view. The Qollahuayan people view their body system as a cycle of body fluids linked with the topographical layout of a mountain. The body fluids which they recognize are fat, bile, milk, semen, and by-products: feces, urine and sweat. The fluids are processed in the Sonco(heart) and must be released in order to keep the cycle of health going. They view these body fluids as important to each level of the body: bottom, middle and top. They also view the mountain as having three layers: bottom middle and top, the top containing a head, eyes and a mouth, the middle containing a stomach and heart, and the bottom containing legs and toenails. They make offerings to the mountain in order to maintain a healthy physiology for themselves. These offerings include serving coca, blood and fat in 13 scallop shells to different earth shrines. Herbalists classify blood based on a system of hold, cold, wet, dry. This is similar to environmental characteristics that can be found on the mountain. Plants and diseases are also given a temperature and/or moisture classification and are matched up accordingly. Plants are also classified by how they affect the flow of fluids. The Qollahuayans view their herbal medicine as an exchange of ingredients between the earth and the body. Everything that the body does is connected to what happens in the environment and what happens in the environment affects their physiology.

Hamilton Library Meeting and Article Notes

Yesterday the group met at Hamilton library to organize our information. So far we have been reading the articles listed below on our own time. At the meeting we collaborated our information and found a way to narrow down key information that helps create our powerpoint. We have also been working on a google doc where we have assembled our scientific questions and are beginning to answer them.

Articles we read for this week:

1985 Bastien Qollahuaya-Andean body concepts

Anderson_1987_Why_is_humoral_medicine_so_popular

Balick et al 2008 Feeling the Pulse in Maya Medicine

Geissler 1998 worms_are_our_life

Iyun 1996 Acute Repiratory Infections - mothers preceptions

Pool 1987 Hot_and_Cold_as_an_explanatory_model

Our group has decided to break it down and have each group member research a specific article. We have all read through each of the articles individually and will contribute from this knowledge but this will be a way for us to analyze the articles specifically. I will be analyzing Bastien's article on the Qollahuaya-Andean body concepts.

Here are some key points and notes I have collected from the article.

• Qollahuaya tribe uses a topigraphical metaphor to explain body systems. (Bastien, 596)
• They understand the mountain as a vertical axis of three levels which blood and fat flow. (Bastien, 596)
• Qollahuayans span over nine allyus, however the article draws information from the Allyu Kaata which has three communities: the Nifiokorin, Kaata, and Apacheta. (Bastien, 596)
• These vertical triangular land mass' in which Qollahuayan communities live are called the allyus. (Bastien, 596-597)
• The Apacheta group sees the mountain in three sections, the top containing a head, eyes and a mouth, the middle containing a stomach and heart, and the bottom containing legs and toenails. (Bastien, 597)
• The Qollahuayans understand their body in terms of the mountain and the mountain in terms of their bodies. (Bastien, 598)
• The Qollahuayans conduct rituals and offerings to the mountain in order to obtain a good cycle of health. “Diviners serve coca, blood, and fat in 13 scallop shells to different earth shrines, which are  associated with  topographical features of the three ecological levels and with  anatomical parts of the human body.” (Bastien, 598)
• Body fluids are an important piece of the Qollahuayan’s view of health. They primarily recognize fat, bile, milk, and semen and by-products feces, urine and sweat. (Bastien, 595)
• The Sonco or the heart are where all of the body fluids are separated, distilled and processed. (Bastien, 598)
• “Blood and fat empower the body: blood ( yawar) is the life principle and fat (wira) is the energy principle.” (Bastien, 599)
• Herbalists classify blood based on a system of hold, cold, wet, dry. They often take the pulse to discover what characteristics the blood has. Different characteristics can mean different diseases. For example cold and wet blood is symptomatic of arthritis. (Bastien, 599)
• Qollahuayans believe that body fluids can be dispersed to the environment. They also believe that illnesses can be caused by certain acts within the environment. For example: “diarrhea in children is often believed to be caused by the mother urinating in a cave at  night.” (Bastien, 600)
• The Qollohuayans use herbal medicine with the view that it is the exchange of ingredients between them and the envronment. They administer these herbs in boiling water and make a tea or mate. (Bastien, 601)
• Herbalists use often analyze health on a system of circulation, distillation and elimination of fluids, often times collecting urine samples early in the morning and viewing them in the sun for discoloration. (Bastien, 601)
• “Qollahuaya herbalists classify plants by how they affect the flow of primary and secondary fluids, eliminate noxious by-products, and cleanse passageways.” (Bastien, 603) 

New Learning Objectives and Scientific Questions

Our group has gone through our google doc and rearranged/changed some of our LO and Scientific questions.

NEW LO:

We will learn what an explanatory model is and list its components.

We will outline and compare explanatory models for 4 different cultures using information collected from the literature.

We will compare how a biomedical explanatory model for a worm infestation of the body relates to two ethnomedical explanatory models for this disease.

We will illustrate how the world views of four specific cultures are integrated with their body concepts.

We will interpret and contrast the etiologies of disease for 4 cultures as represented in the literature.

NEW SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS:

1. What are the main variables that affect  a“hot” or cold” state? (this question will be primarily worked on by peter who is covering the article by Pool)
2. How do the Qollahuayan people of Nifiokorin, Kaata, and Apacheta’s view of hydrollic mountain systems relate to their view of body fluid cycles? (This question will be answered primarily by me. I am using Bastien's article)
3. How does the natural environment of people in the Luo Village of Kenya affect how they view worms and worm infestations of the body? And how does this perception of worms determine how they diagnose and treat the worms? (This will be answered primarily by Leisa who will be using Geissler's article)
4. How are humoral models of disease linked in comparison with global models? (This will be primarily answered by Kristine using Anderson's article)

   
   

   The group is continuing to work out our ideas in a google doc. We have started by deciding on specific cultures to research and dividing up the articles that cover each culture's view on medicine and disease. We are working on narrowing down our research and converting it to a powerpoint presentation.

Dr. Michael Balick

Yesterday we were given the opportunity to view a presentation by Ethnobotanist Dr. Michael Balick from the New York Botanical Garden. The presentation was fascinating and gave insight into this weeks PBL. Balick's presentation was mostly on his time spent in Belize, researching traditional ways of healing and trying to preserve them. Here are some key points I wrote down during the presentation: 

Dr. Michael Balick ,  The New York Botanical Garden

Key points: 

• Habitat conversion threatening ethnomedicine
• Languages on earth are disappearing
• Devolution “with modernization, it may be that knowledge about living things is decreasing opposed to increasing”
• Salvage ethnobotany, working with elders that may not have an apprentice. Working with young people to keep the practice.
• Belize: inventory, ethnobotanical studies:
• Baths in leaves of the Piper family (cleans pores, refreshes skin)
• Neurolaena Lobata – used to fight intestinal parasites, preventing malaria
• Aristolochia grandiflora – used as a tonic. Chopped stem in rum. Used for hangover.
• Metopium Brownei – gives severe rash that spreads throughout the body.
• Bursera Simaruba – creamy liquid in bark, heals the rash, and other skin problems. 
• Terra Nova – Medical Plant Reserve in Belize
• Bush medicine camp: children at risk come to the forrest and work with traditional healers. 
• Intellectual property rights: Convention of Biological Diversity.
• Respect for : self, environment, culture. 

The information given in the presentation was very useful for this week. During the presentation we learned how world globalization is destroying old practices of medicine within Belize. The presentation focused on Belize but this can be seen all over the world. We learned about some of the plant uses in Belize that many people outside the culture may not know about. The fear is that the knowledge of these plant uses is being lost within the culture as well. The uses discovered by the indigenous people of this region could be very helpful for preventing disease inside and outside the region. If the old methods are lost, the knowledge is lost as well and we could be losing something very useful. As we learn about other cultures views of disease systems, it may seem strange and not based off of fact, but these methods have important healing potential that perhaps cannot be understood from a biomedical view. It is also very important that the knowledge of how other cultures view disease is not lost so that we can better understand how to help treat diseases in foreign areas. For example: curing Aids in Africa will be nearly impossible if we cannot understand how African cultures view Aids. 

PBL 2

Our group has established a few learning objectives that we will analyze in class today. We wil use these key concepts to begin our work on the new problem.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand how other cultures view their natural surroundings and how they relate their environment to their health. (for example the  people of Nifiokorin, Kaata, and Apacheta relating a mountain to their body systems) (Bastien 596)
2. Compare how a culture uses plants medicinally to our general knowledge of these plant’s medical attributes.
3. Observe how healers in the community diagnose other members of the society.
4. What are the different contexts in which disease is seen? (i.e. religion, spiritual, imbalance, food eaten, physical activity)

Week 4

Now that we have finished our presentations on PBL 1, we are quickly moving on to PBL 2. Here is our problem for this week:


All humans around the world experience sickness and health. What patterns of general concepts of health and disease exist? How do people explain these? Compare and contrast three different explanatory models for disease and describe what these might tell us about health seeking behaviors generally and medicinal plant use in particular.

Notes on week 3 readings

I jotted down some notes while reading this weeks articles listed below. I have summarized some of the information here. 

Alexiades_1996Ch3_Collecting Ethnobotanical Data

Berlin and Berlin_2005_ Some field methods in MEdical ethnobiology

Etkin_1993_Anthro methods for ethnopharm

Interviews 

• Informal - notes during a casual conversation.
• Unstructured - an interview in casual format but asking questions. 
• Semistructured - a list of questions but still somewhat freeform. 
• Structured - a list of very specific questions. 

Important to keep a journal separate from field notes. 

Picking informants: 

• Strict random sample - everyone has equal chance of selection 
• Stratified random sample - dividing into specific groups such as men and women, then picking at random. 

Difficult to achieve random samples in field because members of the population are often unavailable for study. 

Plant information collection 

• Parts collected 
• Identification 
• Vernacular name 
• Context of collection (who collects, when?)
• Storage 
• Preparation
• Administration 
• Adjunct therapies 
• Symptoms described/ treated 
• Plants use
• Side effects 
• Plant resource use status (how is it affecting the community). 
• Management 
• Distribution 
• Propagation 
• Phenology 
• Plant-animal relation 

Informant Information 

• Background 
• Role in community 
• Profile (name, age, gender) 

Definitions: 

Ethnomedicine: determination of recognized health conditions and equivalents. 

Medical Ethnobotany: Identification and collection of plant species to treat health conditions. 

Ethnopharmacology: discovery and isolation of bioactive agents found in the most important ethnomedical formulas. 

P.I.C. : Prior Informed Consent 

Triad tests: informants group 2 out of 3 conditions as most similar. 

Emic view: insider view 

Etic view: outsider view

Key respondents/consultants: people with more extensive views about local cultural systems. 

To take into consideration: 

Training local research assistents gives back to the community because the training is useful for future jobs. 

Preparation method affects chemical condition of plant medicine. 

Develop ethnoformulary - what botanicals, how to use them. 

Compare the outcome expected by traditional users with the biomedically defined effects of a plant, and assess the circumstances of concordance or discordance. 

Week 3

This week we have worked with our groups on a specific ethnobotanical problem. 

The problem given to my group goes as follows: 

"A remote area of the Amazonian Rainforest, where many others have conducted research. Though remote, the community members are well versed on and averse to encounters with "biopirates." Their primary concerns are maintaining land rights and income generation." 

We are supposed to describe where we will work/ with whom will we work and the goals of our research. 

Our group has chosen to work with the Yanomami tribe of southern Venezuela and Northern Brazil. 

Our group is going to work on a powerpoint and a paper to present. 

We established research questions and learning objectives. 

 

Research Questions:

• How is gold mining affecting the Yanomami's accessibility to its own medicine?
• What is the correlation between knowledge of medicinal plants and accessibility
• With less accessibility to medicinal plants, there is less knowledge in the community about medicinal plant use. 
• Is outside influence negatively correlated to quantity of traditional plant knowledge?
• Who in the community is retaining the traditional plant knowledge?

Learning Objectives: assigned to each group member. 

1. What protocol is important to follow before we arrive? -ksd
2. What are ethnographic approaches and tools used? -ksd
3. How do ethnobotanists go about discovering what plants are useful in the area? -peter
4. How do researchers establish rapport? - sam
5. What inter-/intracultural relations  do researchers need to pay attention to when considering methodological and ethical approach research? -lck

Here is the answer to my learning objective. 

How do researchers establish rapport?

Establishing rapport can be a lengthy process and should not be rushed. The first task is to explore the culture and make observations of how rapport is built and defined by the specific culture. Ethnobotanists should not expect lots of information right at the start and should ease in to the more revealing questions. It is important for the ethnobotanist to develop a good relationship with the informant first. Starting off with small questions, covering topics that both the interviewer and the informant can relate to, can do this. It is also important that while establishing rapport, that the ethnobotanist pays close attention to cultural boundaries and ways of communication. 

Week 2

We read four articles this week and had to answer three questions. For this week I decided to answer the questions all together, not individually, because they are so closely linked. I hope that the answers seem equally complete and have a better flow. 
Here is a list of the articles: 

Cox_1994_Ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery

Fabricant and Farnsworth_2001_Value of plants used in trad med for drug discovery

Harvey_2004_Medicines from nature_are natural products still relveant to drug discovery

Medical Ethnobotany_442_Fall 2011

Andrade-Cetto and Heinrich_2011_From the field into the lab

And the questions: 

What is the ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery?

What are its contributions and challenges?

How has it changed over the last decades?

 

The ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery is essentially the discovery of drugs based off of information that is acquired from field studies. A researcher or research team analyzes plants in a unique culture using techniques talked about during week one. After this information about traditional plant use has been gained, the ethnobotanist collects samples of the researched plants and sends them to a lab. In some cases these plants are screened for new medicinal chemicals. In other studies scientists simply go off of leads and assumptions of what medicinal value plant chemicals may have. These methods have proved very useful and have contributed a lot to pharmaceutical research. About 25% of all prescription drugs in the U.S. and Canada contain chemicals either from or modeled after plant products. (Cox, 25) There are challenges that come with this style of research. Both ethics and time tend to put a damper on field study research. It can be a complicated but important task to conduct ethnobotanical research respectfully in regards to the culture being researched and the country in which it is taking place. An ethnographical research project can take quite a bit of time. A lot goes in to establishing good rapport with a new culture and becoming close enough with informants for them to reveal their knowledge of plants. After that is done, lots more time is spent collecting the right plants, getting them to the lab and having them evaluated. Over the past few decades everything is becoming digital. Faster and easier ways of discovering drugs are being developed but they are becoming expensive themselves. Never the less these new methods of molecular screening are taking over more and more. The approach of random screening currently dominates drug discoveries. (Harvey, 197) Various systems of assays, robotics and databases make it simpler than ever before (Harvey, 197). With the influx of new technology we are jumping to conclusions that synthetically creating medicine is the best way. However, there still lies plenty of value in more traditional ethnobotanical approaches. Only 6% of the world's plant species have been screened for biological activity and only 15% have been evaluated phytochemically. (Fabricant and Fansworth, 69) This shows that there is stil plenty of potential for major breakthroughs in drug discovery through plants. It is important for ethnobotanists to continue to find the most ethical and practical ways to go about research and continue to learn about the way in which plants are used for medicine. There could be many cures hiding in the wild. 

Week 1

This week we read three articles and had to answer three questions. I have listed the articles below as sources:
 

Balick and Cox_1996_Plants People and Culture Chapter 2_Plants that Heal

Lewis and Elivin-Lewis_2003_Medical Botany_Intro

Sumner_2000_NaturalHistoryOfMedicinalPlants_Ch1 Brief History of Medical Botany Answered questions:

What are some key questions in medical ethnobotany today?

Who owns what? What rights do people have over property where plants are harvested? Over the information about the uses of plants? Over the plants themselves? What is the impact on the environment when harvesting medicinal plants? What are the risks of species endangerment when harvesting medicinal plants? How do indigenous tribes view medicinal plants? How does western medicine use medicinal plants? Which plants should be the focus of pharmaceutical research? How are tribes being repaid for their contribution of medicinal plant knowledge? What defines a medicinal plant? How is the name of a medicinal plant decided? How do scientists discover which ailments are treated by which plants? Where do you see the discipline’s niche in the future? I think medicinal ethnobotany will play a large role in the future of human health. People are beginning to revert back to herbal medicine more and more as there seems to be a lack of trust and connection with western medicine doctors. The study of medical ethnobotany will be ever important in insuring the safety and proper use of medicinal plants. The discipline will also play a vital role in the discovery of new plants, whether it be for classic uses or for lab scientists to discover chemicals in search of a new drug. As stated in Sumner’s Natural History of Medicinal Plants only 5% of the worlds estimated flowering plants have been analyzed for medicinal compounds. How does one prepare to work in this field? One prepares for work in medical ethnobotany by having a good knowledge of medicinal plants and the cultures that use them. It is important that before going into ethnographical field work, that the researcher has a good grip of the native culture including language, gestures, rituals etc… It is also a good idea for the researcher to know the various plant species names and how the native people view medicine in contrast to western medicine. A background in how to take plant samples, conduct interviews and select informants would also be necessary.

Medical Ethnobotany

Hello everyone! This blog is a journal for my Medical Ethnobotany class at University of Hawaii at Manoa. I transfered this semester from South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. I am an undergrad student, studying ethnobotany and I am very excited to be part of the program and part of this class. I have a passion for plants and particularly plant medicine, so this class is ideal for my interest. Before I get started I would like to give a bit of an introduction about the topics that are going to be covered.
Ethnobotany is the study of human's relations with plants. This class will be focusing on using plants as medicine as well as the process and ethics that come along with it. Medical ethnobotany can be described as: the identification and collection of plant species to treat health conditions. Just like all other forms of ethnobotany, many disciplines come in to play such as anthropology, history, geography, chemistry,  and botany.
I Joined this class about 2 weeks late. I have recently been working hard to catch up on all of the readings and work with my newly assigned group on an ethnobotanical research problem. I have now mostly caught up and I will be posting my work for the last 3 weeks all at once. Now that the catch up work is done I will update the blog on a more regular basis, once every couple days or so. Enjoy!