Ethnobotanical notes from Amazonian Brazil

Abstract

During the course of a year of field work in Amazonian Brazil in 1971, I visited four different tribes of Indians in widely separated localities (Fig. 1). While among these tribes, we were able to gather much ethnobotanical information, some of which is presented here. Many of the plants discussed have already been reported in other sources cited, but some of the plant uses given here are recorded for the first time. The principal aim of this study, however, is to provide well documented evidence of these plant uses correlated with herbarium voucher material. The collections cited are deposited in the herbaria of the New York Botanical Garden (NY), the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA), and the Economic Herbarium of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University (ECON). Three of the four tribes visited now live on the fringes of western civilization and show a varying degree of acculturation. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to gather as much ethnobotanical information as possible before it is permanently lost. We made a special effort to collect data from the Indians on their uses of plants.