Marcgrave and Piso's plants for sale: The presence of plant species and names from the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648) in contemporary Brazilian markets

• Published in: Journal of ethnopharmacology 2020-09, Vol.259, p.112911-112911, Article 112911
• Main Authors: Alcántara Rodríguez, Mireia, Pombo Geertsma, Isabela, Françozo, Mariana, van Andel, Tinde
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brazil; Commerce; Dutch Brazil; Ethnobotany - economics; Ethnobotany - history; Ethnopharmacology; Historical ethnobotany; History, 17th Century; Humans; Indigenous knowledge; Market surveys; Medicine, Traditional - economics; Medicine, Traditional - history; Phytotherapy - economics; Phytotherapy - history; Plants, Medicinal; Tupi; Vernacular plant names
• ISSN: 0378-8741; 1872-7573
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jep.2020.112911

Parallelisms 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. We 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. Out 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. The 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. Os paralelismos entre as práticas medicinais atuais e históricas, como aquelas descritas no tratado seiscentista História Naturalis Brasiliae (HNB), fornecem uma visão geral das transformações do conhecimento tradicional sobre plantas. Os mercados locais refletem o uso atual das plantas em ambientes urbanos e rurais, permitindo rastrear semelhanças de conhecimento etnobotânico em diferentes períodos históricos. Nosso objetivo é verificar até que ponto o HNB, criado no nordeste do Brasil, carrega semelhanças com o uso con