Welcoming community contributions

I'd like to invite anyone who is willing to submit a book or product review.  If you are the retailer of the product you may submit to me directly for review. 

At this time I am also accepting guest posts for this blog.  It's a great way to get a backlink to your own blog, and it helps me fill in some much need quality content. Win-Win for everyone including my readers.

You can contact me at:   myers06   at  gmail   dot   com.   

Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel Moerman

Ever since I was a little boy I have been fascinated with how our ancestors used plants for food as well as medicine. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started seeking out and purchasing books on edible and medicinal plants. I subscribed to different publications whose main focus was this subject. Any article in magazines on this subject immediately grabbed my attention. Then with the wonderful internet becoming available to anyone with a computer, my search for information took an exciting turn.
One website for information linked to another site, and then to another and so on. But through time and my amateur research I discovered my interest started centering more and more on how Native Americans used plants for different purposes not only edible and medicinal but for dyes for ornamentation, for baskets and cooking vessels, for seasoning, etc. But I was so overwhelmed with information that didn't focus on this specific area until I came across the website of Dan Moerman's Native American Ethnobotany database; I found nirvana. I blundered around and through the website for months but with his kind help and patience with my questions I began to use his database in a more productive way. But then I discovered he had recently published a book called Native American Ethnobotany!! (...)  This is one of the items I would run back to save if my house ever burned down! It is worth every penny and is priceless in its information.

Ethnobotanical knowledge is associated with indices of child health in the Bolivian Amazon

Culture is a critical determinant of human behavior and health, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge regarding the use of available plant resources has historically been an essential function of culture. Local ethnobotanical knowledge is important for health and nutrition, particularly in rural low-resource settings, but cultural and economic transitions associated with globalization threaten such knowledge. This prospective study investigates the association between parental ethnobotanical knowledge and child health among the Tsimane', a horticulturalist and foraging society in Amazonian Bolivia. Anthropometric data and capillary blood samples were collected from 330 Tsimane' 2- to 10-year-olds, and mothers and fathers were interviewed to assess ethnobotanical knowledge and skills. Comprehensive measures of parental schooling, acculturation, and economic activities were also collected. Dependent variables included three measures of child health: (i) C-reactive protein, assayed in whole-blood spots as an indicator of immunostimulation; (ii) skinfold thickness, to estimate subcutaneous fat stores necessary to fuel growth and immune function; and (iii) height-for-age, to assess growth stunting. Each child health measure was associated with maternal ethnobotanical knowledge, independent of a wide range of potentially confounding variables. Each standard deviation of maternal ethnobotanical knowledge increased the likelihood of good child health by a factor of >1.5. Like many populations around the world, the Tsimane' are increasingly facing the challenges and opportunities of globalization. These results underscore the importance of local cultural factors to child health and document a potential cost if ethnobotanical knowledge is lost.

Excerpt from abstract. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6134.abstract

I agree with the supposition of the author although I feel it requires more study to be sure.  What about Paternal ethnobotanical knowlegdge?  How does that relate.  If a similar correlation could be observed wouldn't that stregthen the underlying hypothesis?

Plants of the Gods, Shultes and Hoffman, a brief review.

A friend of mine here in Hawaii, recently lent me this excellent text.  Plants of the Gods, by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hoffman is a comprehensive reference work on psychoactive plants. Although it could have been organized better, I absolutely loved the plethora of full color plant photos.

It provides a definition of plant hallucinogens and information on phytochemical research on sacred plants, geography of usage and botanical range, the chemical structures of these substances and the use of hallucinogens in medicine.  Highly worth a peek.

Banisteriopsis Caapi, Finding live plants

Trying to find live Banisteriopsis caapi plants can be a daunting task.  Although a google search would seem to indicate that there are many places to choose from, the reality is most shops are sold out.

Whether this is some trick to increase traffic to ethno vendor sites or a seasonal issue, I can't say.

What I can say is I got darn sick of clicking through to various ethnobotanical shops to find it listed "out-of-stock".

Well the search is over and 3 different strains are available from this guy.

Trouts Notes on San Pedro & Related Species

This book pertains to San Pedro cacti (Trichocereus species in Latin taxonomy), which contain mescaline, the powerful hallucinogen also found in peyote. Conveniently, the full title of this book Trout's Notes on San Pedro and Related Species - A Guide to Their Visual Recognition With Notes on Their Botany,



Chemistry and History gives a precise indication of it's content. The blurb on the back cover says, "More than you need to know" and this is certainly true unless the reader wants all of the very exhaustive info contained in this book that splits hairs about species, subspecies, strains, varieties, botanical identification, classification and naming of Trichocereus (San Pedro) cacti and so on. This reviewer would imagine that most readers, even those particularly interested in Trichocereus species would find almost all of this book to have much more information than is necessary.

Also, only the most technically apt readers will appreciate (or even begin to understand) the info provided on the chemical extraction and analysis of "tricho" cacti. However, more info is better than not enough and this book is certainly a great contribution to the body of ethnopharmacology as no one else seems to be providing even a fraction of the detailed info contained in this book and the authors are to be highly commended for all their research and the compiling and organizing of their info in this book.

CCLE

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/index.html#"

Hello World.

Why hello world? Just to put something there.