By Rachel Thomas

If we want to protect medicinal plants, we know that we must protect their ecosystems. We know that they need sun, water, air, and earth. They may also depend on pollinators, or other interventions from the animal kingdom, to reproduce or to stay alive. 

Medicinal plants have a unique reciprocity with humans. The more we give them, the more they give back. Basil loves to be gently trimmed and, in return, grows beautiful new leaves. Vanilla needs to be manually reproduced and, in return, offers a delicious, healing aroma. Hibiscus provides a cooling yummy tea, and we must save the seeds for next season to continue the cycle.

We exchange potted herbs with friends and neighbors to share their heart-warming tastes and medicinal powers. We weed them, water them, and treat their infestations. Sometimes we sing to them, talk with them, pray with them, and try to protect the land where they grow. It is so powerful every time that we perform any of these acts of love and symbiosis with our cherished medicinals.

The impact of our actions can be magnified by others choosing similar actions. The more we, as a group, know and love a plant, the more culture we create around that plant. The more our cultural practices include these plants, the more likely we are to take care of them and ensure their survival.

The cultural context of a medicinal plant is like a precursor to the ecological context. As we create or conserve culture around a plant, people share information, and their passion is contagious. Media, organizations, and journals like this one, use education to promote cultural practices of plant conservation. Education helps to promote consciousness around how we use our plants and how we can keep them from disappearing. 

In some communities, conserving traditional ethnobotany is a way of life. Elders teach young people herbal medicine, as well as how to sustain the cultural and conservation practices that have been passed down through generations. 

Through modernization, colonialization, and displacement, a medicinal plant’s cultural context can experience fast and volatile changes. Medicinal plants may be misused when their cultural contexts are neglected. Plants that become too popular can face overuse and even extinction. 

On the other hand, a plant may lose popularity. Sometimes, cultural practices move away from a plant or away from herbalism in general. As people abandon their plant allies, they also abandon their ethnobotanical practices. Historically, this has happened by force and has often been a product of politics, economics, and religious or colonial domination. Through cultural assimilation, values change, practices are lost, and traditional herbalism can be forgotten.

Cultural conservation leads to ethnobotanical conservation and vice versa. Those who fight to maintain their traditional lifestyles are also protecting the plants intertwined with their survival. Around the world, many people still face political domination and attacks on their traditions. They struggle to keep their ancestral land and the culture that connects them to it. This struggle directly impacts the survival of their medicinal plants.

It is to our benefit to know which plants our ancestors used, how they used them, and the cultural practices created that they were part of. When we connect with a plant outside of our own ancestry, it is also important to connect to the plant’s cultural context. What land does the plant come from? How can we show our love to the plant and to those who have been protecting it? What cultural practices can help us achieve symbiosis with the plant? 

Getting to know a plant can mean so much more than just knowing what it is good for. Is it used in honey, in bread, in wine, in food, to make incense, a cup of tea, a steam bath, or an infused oil? Does the plant have a time of year, a time of day, songs it likes, or dances it inspires? Maybe it is a simple daily routine or maybe it is a complex ceremony that requires a qualified elder, special music, fasting, and other protocols. The smells, the smiles, the sounds. Maybe its use is intertwined with body work, divination, purging, praying, community building, or other healing arts. The possibilities are endless.
A plant’s cultural context can be diverse over time and space. One plant can have hundreds of names around the world and just as many ethnobotanical uses. How we use plants and how we maintain traditions impact how well we take care of them. We can show our support to others who are struggling to protect their ecosystems and maintain their cultural context. We can also look to our own history to discover the plants with whom we share an ancestral relationship. We can even attempt to recreate and reconnect with the cultural context that our predecessors shared with their favorite botanical allies.

As we move towards a future of sustainability, understanding the history and complexity of herbalism can only strengthen our efforts. Conserving our medicinal plants includes embracing their cultural contexts, protecting their native land, and honoring their ancestral caretakers. 

Rachel Thomas is an author, teacher, health coach, herbalist, and activist. She created the ethnobotanical sanctuary at Hidden Garden in Costa Rica, where for over 20 years she studied, taught, and consulted as an herbalist. The garden has served as a safe space for traditional healers to share their stories with students and with each other. Rachel is currently connecting with her own roots by researching prehistoric Greek ethnobotany. She offers health coaching with an ancestral medicine twist as well as academic consultations at Ancient Wellness Tools.

References

Alex, Bridget. “Why Prehistoric Herders Didn’t Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds.” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 3, 2022. 

Carney, Judith & Rosomoff, Richard. In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. University of California Press. University of California Press, 2009.

Leopold, Susan. “What is going on with White Sage?” Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation, 2019. 

Thomas, Rachel. “Herbalism Survival in Refugee Families.” Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation, 2021.

Tortorello, Michael. “The Seeds of Survival,” The New York Times, June 13, 2012.