Ethnobotanical Knowledge in Mexico: Use, Management, and Other Interactions Between People and Plants

Abstract

This chapter shows a general panorama of ethnobotanical research and information generated during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries among Mexican cultures, according to the database Base de Datos Etnobotánicos de Plantas Mexicanas (BADEPLAM) of the Botanical Garden at the Institute of Biology, UNAM. This is the most complete database with ethnobotanical information in Mexico, whose construction started nearly 40 years ago. It was a pioneer effort to systematize biocultural information in this country, which has continued until now and has stored nearly 60,000 records on plants used and managed by different cultural groups in different ecosystems of Mexico. It includes information on nearly 7823 useful plant species, which is approximately one-third of the total native vascular flora of the country. Through different approaches, it is estimated that the real number could be more than 11,500 species, which gives an idea of the effort still required to complete the inventory; in addition, the current inventory has information from numerous Mestizo people communities, but only 32 of the 68 main linguistic groups of Mexico; not all the states of Mexico have been studied, and ethnobotanical research has concentrated in one-half of the states composing Mexico. All this information indicates that although BADEPLAM is probably the oldest project of biocultural informatics in Latin America, there is a long way to complete the task of inventorying the ethnobotanical knowledge of the country. BADEPLAM has records for 4222 medicinal plant species, 2265 ornamental, 2051 edible, 1974 used as fodder, and 975 for fuelwood, among other uses. Most species (nearly 64%) are wild and weedy plants collected from forests, mainly tropical dry forests (1995 species), tropical rain forests (1928 species), temperate forests (1440 species) and xerophytic vegetation (1361 species), grasslands, and agricultural areas. However, nearly 3000 species are managed through one or more forms, some of them showing incipient or intermediate signs of domestication. Nearly 500 species are fully domesticated crops, approximately one-half of them (251 species) being native to the Mesoamerican region. Plant families contributing with the highest richness of useful plants are Fabaceae (752 species), Asteraceae (727), Poaceae (476), Cactaceae (474), Euphorbiaceae (233), Malvaceae (198), and Solanaceae (195). Associated with BADEPLAM, several research groups have articulated our work coordinating different approaches to generate inventories of knowledge, management techniques, and different forms of interactions between people and plants. These inventories have been performed at rural community (more than 150 communities) and regional levels (17 main biocultural regions of Mexico) feeding the database while constructing different theoretical frameworks on traditional classification and worldviews, use, management and domestication, and bases for sustainable use of plants and ecosystems. Several approaches have enhanced our studies, but plant management and domestication have been some of the most important issues. We understand that management is a crucial expression of interactions between people and plants, reflecting their knowledge and worldviews, and it is a topic that allows connecting ethnobotany with social, cultural, and economic themes, as well as with socio-ecological bases for sustainable management and studies on evolution of plants through domestication at populations and landscape levels. In this chapter, we show general insights of the research approaches developed by our teams. Most of our studies have been conducted in mountainous regions since Mexico is an eminent mountainous country. Therefore, this text provides general perspectives of the ethnobotanical knowledge of Mexico, as well as methodological approaches that are helpful to contextualize the entire volume of this book.