Abstract
Ethnopharmacological relevanceParallelisms between current and historical medicinal practices as described in the seventeenth century treatise Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (HNB) provide us with an overview of traditional plant knowledge transformations. Local markets reflect the actual plant use in urban and rural surroundings, allowing us to trace cross-century similarities of ethnobotanical knowledge. Aims of the study: We aim to verify in how far the HNB, created in seventeenth-century northeastern Brazil, correlates with contemporary plant use in the country by comparing the plant knowledge therein with recent plant market surveys at national level. Materials and methodsWe conducted a literature review on ethnobotanical market surveys in Brazil. We used the retrieved data on plant composition and vernacular names, together with our own fieldwork from the Ver-o-Peso market in Belém, to compare each market repertoire with the useful species in the HNB. We analyzed similarities among markets and the HNB with a Detrended Correspondence Analysis and by creating Venn diagrams. We analyzed the methods of the different markets to check whether they influenced our results. ResultsOut of the 24 markets reviewed, the greatest similarities with the HNB are seen in northern Brazilian markets, both in plant composition and vernacular names, followed by the northeast. The least overlap is found with markets in the central west and Rio de Janeiro. Most of the shared vernacular names with the HNB belonged to languages of the Tupi linguistic family. ConclusionThe similarity patterns in floristic composition among Brazilian markets and the HNB indicate the current wider distribution and trade of the species that Marcgrave and Piso described in 1648 in the northeast. Migration of indigenous groups, environmental changes, globalized and homogenous plant trade, and different market survey methods played a role in these results. The HNB is a reference point in time that captures a moment of colonial cultural transformations.
Highlights
Boosted by the Dutch colonial enterprise, an influential scientific account of Brazil's natural history was created from a relatively small, but highly biodiverse, territory of the vast country
We posed the following research questions (Aguiar, 2018): Which plants are sold at local markets in several regions of Brazil (Albuquerque, 1997)? What are the similarities in species composition between these markets and the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (HNB) (Albuquerque et al, 2007)? To which extent and where do we find similarities in Tupi plant names as documented in the HNB? We expected to find the greatest overlap in plant species composition and plant names in the northeast of Brazil, and in particular in Pernambuco, because the HNB was compiled there
Our literature review yielded Brazilian market surveys, which combined with our own fieldwork (Pombo Geertsma, 2019), resulted in surveys (Table 1)
Summary
Boosted by the Dutch colonial enterprise, an influential scientific account of Brazil's natural history was created from a relatively small, but highly biodiverse, territory of the vast country. Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen was appointed as governor-general of the colony between 1637 and 1644 He commissioned a group of naturalists, artists and physicians to describe and illustrate the local diseases, flora and fauna of Dutch Brazil, generating one of the most comprehensive treatises of tropical natural history of the early modern period: the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (HNB). De Laet systematized local knowledge on plants and animals as reported by Piso and Marcgrave, and added several illustrations, combining art and science in an encyclopedic format (Whitehead and Boeseman, 1989) He was influenced by other naturalists, explorers and religious chroniclers that travelled to the Americas, reflected in the many comparisons he wrote throughout the text, especially for plants (Françozo, 2010). Not acknowledged but essential to create this book, were the diverse Tupi-speaking indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans and their descendants, and Portuguese and Dutch settlers in the colony, whose ecological knowledge was documented in the HNB (Furtado, 2007; Alcantara Rodriguez et al, 2019)
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