Plants of the Gods: S4E6. Part 1 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard

And, you know, I mean— It is true that some ethnobotany tends to be lists of plants, like here's a list of plants, this is the indigenous word, this is the scientific name, this is how they use it.

That's certainly an important part of ethnobotany, that basic documentation, but I think talking about the present and the future of ethnobotany, what intrigues me most about ethnobotany is that is the first step to creating this dialogue.

Well, they have a word for something, for this plant and they have a use for it.

And through botanical collections and through anthropological interviews, you can sort of make the connection, well, this is the plant they use to treat whatever disease.

And this is what it is in botanical terms.

And this is their translation of whatever illness it is, headache or bone sprain, bone break or diarrhea.

But for me, what becomes more interesting is when you can understand what it is about that plant that makes it function in that way for them.

And so in my research, what I discovered, what I found out was that that connection between, I mean, it's one thing to say, oh, this plant treats headache.

Well, why does that plant treat headache? And most ethnobotanists or anthropologists, I don't really ask that kind of question.

But when you start asking that question, what I found was that most of the time, the connection between the The plant use and the efficacy, how they understood the use of that plant, had to do with sensory properties of the plants, whether it's a taste or an odor.

And there we go back to the tree that smelled like a fart.

Indigenous people use these complex notions of odor, taste, texture.

The color of plants, they make these complex associations between the properties of the plants that we call the chemosensory properties of the plants and the efficacy of the plants.

And I mean, there was fascinating examples.

Sometimes they are... direct like, oh, this is a plant that's bitter, so therefore it kills whatever invisible microbes are in your belly.

But sometimes the connections are a bit more complex.

I remember with the Yaminawa herbalist that I was working with, we were walking through the forest and I was trying to understand this concept of the there's a whole category of plants that they call huidarao.

Huidarao means wasp medicine and wasp illness.

Rao in the Yaminao language means medicine and illness at the same time.

And so huidarao.

And they say, you see this plant here? You're walking by this plant.

You're minding your own business.

And yet, just like a wasp nest, this plant has this angry spirit and it attacks you.

And it makes you sick.

And you have to figure out which wasp plant gave you the wasp illness to make you better.