Ethnobotanical study of the Chontal home gardens of Simón Sarlat, Centla, Tabasco, Mexico

Abstract

Human-plant interactions are complex and variable phenomena in the different ecological and cultural regions of the Mexican territory. They have obtained from their relationship with nature a series of knowledge, achieving in this way a management of natural resources. This relationship has led them to form small, highly diversified production units called home gardens. Therefore, the objective of this work was to carry out an ethnobotanical study of the home gardens of Simón Sarlat Centla, Tabasco, and Mexico. For this purpose, the study area was visited during the months of August 2020 to January 2021. People with gardens were selected and semi-structured interviews were applied to obtain information about the type of plants they have. Twenty-five orchards were studied in which the age of the people interviewed was between 40 and 80 years old. A total of 193 useful plants were identified in the home gardens, corresponding to 75 botanical families, with Lamiaceae, Solanaceae, Acanthaceae and Asteraceae standing out. Nineteen categories of use were established from the information provided. The category represented by the largest number of plants is ornamental plants with 67 species. Of the 193 species found in the orchards, their origin was identified, of which 125 were introduced plants and 68 were considered native, i.e., only 35% of the flora in the orchards is native. Finally, it is concluded that the home gardens of Simón Sarlat, Centla, Tabasco are very diverse, but that traditional knowledge is being lost because preference is being given to introduce species.