When Rainer Bussmann discovered a new plant species in the Andean cloud forest in Peru, he saw both opportunity for the native population and an inducement to preserve the forest where the plant grows. The seeds from that plant could be roasted and turned into a highly nutritious snack. The snack could be sold around the world and the revenue generated could improve the lives of Peruvian farmers.
Translating discovery into results is routine for Bussmann, an ethnobotanist and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center. “Ethnobotany is the science of how people use plants,” he explained. Since plants enter into almost every human endeavor, from sustaining life as food to giving us pleasure in gardens and wilderness, ethnobotany covers a lot of ground.
A major part of the ethnobotanist’s focus is discovery. There is a sense of urgency about finding and evaluating new plant species, because specimen-rich environments like rain forests are being destroyed constantly. Since only a small fraction of the estimated plant species have been evaluated for human use, the very plant that holds the key to curing Ted Kennedy’s type of brain cancer could be wiped out if a new gold mine is excavated in the Andean cloud forest.
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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.