History of botany & collections by Mark Nesbitt
Species of the genus Cinchona (Rubiaceae) have been used in traditional medicine, and as a source... more Species of the genus Cinchona (Rubiaceae) have been used in traditional medicine, and as a source for quinine since its discovery as an effective medicine against malaria in the 17th century. Despite being the sole cure of malaria for almost 350 years, little is known about the chemical diversity between and within species of the antimalarial alkaloids found in the bark. Extensive historical Cinchona bark collections housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, and in other museums may shed new light on the alkaloid chemistry of the Cinchona genus and the history of the quest for the most effective Cinchona barks. Aim of the study: We used High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) coupled with fluorescence detection (FLD) to reanalyze a set of Cinchona barks originally annotated for the four major quinine alkaloids by John Eliot Howard and others more than 150 years ago. Materials and methods: We performed an archival search on the Cinchona bark collections in the Economic Botany Collection housed in Kew, focusing on those with historical alkaloid content information. Then, we performed HPLC analysis of the bark samples to separate and quantify the four major quinine alkaloids and the total alkaloid content using fluorescence detection. Correlations between historic and current annotations were calculated using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, before paired comparisons were performed using Wilcox rank sum tests. The effects of source were explored using generalized linear modelling (GLM), before the significance of each parameter in predicting alkaloid concentrations were assessed using chi-square tests as likelihood ratio testing (LRT) models. Results: The total alkaloid content estimation obtained by our HPLC analysis was comparatively similar to the historical chemical annotations made by Howard. Additionally, the quantity of two of the major alkaloids, quinine and cinchonine, and the total content of the four alkaloids obtained were significantly similar between the historical and current day analysis using linear regression. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the historical chemical analysis by Howard and current day HPLC alkaloid content estimations are comparable. Current day HPLC analysis thus provide a realistic estimate of the alkaloid contents in the historical bark samples at the time of sampling more than 150 years ago. Museum collections provide a powerful but underused source of material for understanding early use and collecting history as well as for comparative analyses with current day samples.
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Mobile Museums presents an argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum coll... more Mobile Museums presents an argument for the importance of circulation in the study of museum collections, past and present. It brings together an impressive array of international scholars and curators from a wide variety of disciplines – including the history of science, museum anthropology and postcolonial history - to consider the mobility of collections. The book combines historical perspectives on the circulation of museum objects in the past with contemporary accounts of their re-mobilisation, notably in the context of Indigenous community engagement. Contributors seek to explore processes of circulation historically in order to re-examine, inform and unsettle common assumptions about the way museum collections have evolved over time and through space.
By foregrounding questions of circulation, the chapters in Mobile Museums collectively represent a fundamental shift in the understanding of the history and future uses of museum collections. The book addresses a variety of different types of collection, including the botanical, the ethnographic, the economic and the archaeological. Its perspective is truly global, with case studies drawn from South America, West Africa, Oceania, Australia, the United States, Europe and the UK. Mobile Museums helps us to understand why the mobility of museum collections was a fundamental aspect of their history and why it continues to matter today.
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The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has been a cornerstone of Middle Eastern and North African ag... more The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has been a cornerstone of Middle Eastern and North African agriculture for millennia. It was first domesticated in the Persian Gulf, and its evolution appears to have been influenced by gene flow from two wild relatives, P. theophrasti, currently restricted to Crete and Turkey, and P. sylvestris, widespread from Bangladesh to the West Himalayas. Genomes of ancient date palm seeds show that gene flow from P. theophrasti to P. dactylifera may have occurred by $2,200 years ago, but traces of P. sylvestris could not be detected. We here integrate archeogenomics of a $2,100-year-old P. dactylifera leaf from Saqqara (Egypt), molecular-clock dating, and coalescence approaches with population genomic tests, to probe the hybridization between the date palm and its two closest relatives and provide minimum and maximum timestamps for its reticulated evolution. The Saqqara date palm shares a close genetic affinity with North African date palm populations, and we find clear genomic admixture from both P. theophrasti, and P. sylvestris, indicating that both had contributed to the date palm genome by 2,100 years ago. Molecular-clocks placed the divergence of P. theophrasti from P. dactylifera/P. sylvestris and that of P. dactylifera from P. sylvestris in the Upper Miocene, but strongly supported, conflicting topologies point to older gene flow between P. theophrasti and P. dactylifera, and P. sylvestris and P. dactylifera. Our work highlights the ancient hybrid origin of the date palms, and prompts the investigation of the functional significance of genetic material introgressed from both close relatives, which in turn could prove useful for modern date palm breeding.
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Journal of Museum Education, 2021
This article analyzes an educational initiative between Kew Gardens, Royal Holloway, University o... more This article analyzes an educational initiative between Kew Gardens, Royal Holloway, University of London, and two London primary schools. The schools, located in areas of high ethnic diversity, worked with the members of the Mobile Museum project team – including the Learning Department at Kew and researchers at both institutions – to create their own school museums. The idea was inspired by historical research conducted by the project team that demonstrated Kew’s historic involvement in the promotion of object-based learning in schools. The project team worked with teachers and pupils to develop a participatory approach to learning about plants and their uses through the creation of school museums. A whole-school framework was adopted, extending the potential reach of the project to pupils’ parents and communities. Inspired by the collections at Kew, schools used plants and plant-associated artifacts to learn more about the rich diversity of pupils' cultural backgrounds and the importance of plants to their heritage and their everyday lives.
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The watermelon (Citrullus lanatus subsp.vulgaris) is among the world's most important fruit crops... more The watermelon (Citrullus lanatus subsp.vulgaris) is among the world's most important fruit crops. We here use C-14 dating and morphometric analysis to test whether ancient seeds can be identified to species level, which would help document food expansion, innovation, and diversity in Northeastern Africa. We dated a Libyan seed to 6182–6001 calibrated years BP, making it the oldest Citrullus seed known. Morphometric analysis could not reliably assign ancient seeds to particular species, but several seeds showed breakage patterns characteristic of modern watermelon seeds cracked by human teeth. Our study contributes to the understanding of the early his-tory of watermelon use by humans, who may have mostly snacked on the seeds, and cautions against the use of morphology alone to identify Citrullus archaeological samples.
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Apuntos, 2022
Este artículo es el resultado de una valoración de los objetos colombianos en la Colección de Bot... more Este artículo es el resultado de una valoración de los objetos colombianos en la Colección de Botánica Económica del Real Jardín Botánico de Kew. Hace parte del proyecto ColPlantA, encargado de documentar la colección colombiana y de producir un portal de búsqueda sobre la flora colombiana. Para este artículo se hizo un análisis general de la colección colombiana, que resultó en una descripción de los géneros y especies representativas, los usos de la flora nativa colombiana y sus coleccionistas. Además, se describen algunos objetos que reflejan los intereses científicos y económicos de Gran Bretaña en Colombia. Esta colección es una ventana a las dinámicas entre una institución académica imperial como Kew con regiones como Colombia, de la periferia global de aquel entonces.
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A cultural history of plants: nineteenth century, 2022
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10.1093/molbev/msac168, 2022
Iconographic evidence from Egypt suggests that watermelon pulp was consumed there as a dessert by... more Iconographic evidence from Egypt suggests that watermelon pulp was consumed there as a dessert by 4,360 BP. Earlier archaeobotanical evidence comes from seeds from Neolithic settlements in Libya, but whether these were watermelons with sweet pulp or other forms is unknown. We generated genome sequences from 6,000-and 3,300-year-old seeds from Libya and Sudan, and from worldwide herbarium collections made between 1824 and 2019, and analyzed these data together with resequenced genomes from important germplasm collections for a total of 131 accessions. Phylogenomic and population-genomic analyses reveal that (1) much of the nuclear genome of both ancient seeds is traceable to West African seed-use "egusi-type" watermelon (Citrullus mucosospermus) rather than domesticated pulp-use watermelon (Citrullus lanatus ssp. vulgaris); (2) the 6,000-year-old watermelon likely had bitter pulp and greenish-white flesh as today found in C. mucosospermus, given alleles in the bitterness regulators ClBT and in the red color marker LYCB; and (3) both ancient genomes showed admixture from C. mucosospermus, C. lanatus ssp. cordophanus, C. lanatus ssp. vulgaris, and even South African Citrullus amarus, and evident introgression between the Libyan seed (UMB-6) and populations of C. lanatus. An unexpected new insight is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material.
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Anales del Jardín Botánico de Madrid, 2022
During the “Real Expedición Botánica al Virreinato del Perú”, 1777–1816, Hipólito Ru... more During the “Real Expedición Botánica al Virreinato del Perú”, 1777–1816, Hipólito Ruiz López (1754–1816), José Antonio Pavón Jiménez (1754–1840), Juan José Tafalla Navascués (1755–1811) and Juan Agustín Manzanilla (fl. 1793–1816) collected economically important specimens of anti-malarial cinchona bark (Cinchona spp.). In the 230 years since, these specimens have been dispersed across institutions in Spain, Britain, Germany and Italy. Two major sub-collections of these are found at the Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Spain (n = 243), and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK (n = 188). The Kew collection arrived in Britain through Pavón and other Spanish botanists selling part of the collections. This study traces the history, trajectory and relationship of the collections between the two institutes
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The Andean fever tree (Cinchona L.; Rubiaceae) is a source of bioactive quinine alkaloids used to... more The Andean fever tree (Cinchona L.; Rubiaceae) is a source of bioactive quinine alkaloids used to treat malaria. C. pubescens Vahl is a valuable cash crop within its native range in northwestern South America, however, genomic resources are lacking. Here we provide the first highly contiguous and annotated nuclear and plastid genome assemblies using Oxford Nanopore PromethION-derived long-read and Illumina short-read data. Our nuclear genome assembly comprises 603 scaffolds with a total length of 904 Mbp (∼82% of the full genome based on a genome size of 1.1 Gbp/1C). Using a combination of de novo and reference-based transcriptome assemblies we annotated 72,305 coding sequences comprising 83% of the BUSCO gene set and 4.6% fragmented sequences. Using additional plastid and nuclear datasets we place C. pubescens in the Gentianales order. This first genomic resource for C. pubescens opens new research avenues, including the analysis of alkaloid biosynthesis in the fever tree.
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Molecular identification of plants: from sequence to species, 2023
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Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2023
Introducing additional complexity to naming standards could slow down the documentation of biodiv... more Introducing additional complexity to naming standards could slow down the documentation of biodiversity, which is a risk we cannot afford at a time of crisis. Mass renaming would also complicate access to existing taxonomic literature, including the regional floras, faunas and fungas that are so essential to field biology and conservation. Ultimately, we argue it is a taxonomist's responsibility-as well as within the bounds of academic freedom-to construct appropriate scientific names.
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A wild relative of the garden pea, formerly called Pisum sativum L., but now included in the genu... more A wild relative of the garden pea, formerly called Pisum sativum L., but now included in the genus Lathyrus, is illustrated, and its relationship to cultivated peas is discussed. Recent studies of the DNA of Pisum and Lathyrus have led to the change of name for this common species. It is generally confusing to non-specialists (and most specialists) when a familiar Linnean species undergoes a sudden name change, and even more remarkable when the 'new' name turns out to have been published in the late 18th century, not long after Linnaeus' first edition of Species Plantarum. The author of Lathyrus oleraceus was Jean Baptiste Antoine Pierre de Monnet de Lamarck (1744-1829). Lamarck's career was remarkable even for those unsettled times, and he is well-known, and sometimes derided, for his belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. He was however an early proponent of evolution and adaptation of organisms to the environment which he saw in his studies of molluscs as well as of plants. Lamarck's Flore Française ou description succincte de toutes les plantes qui croissent naturellement en France, was arranged like an analytical key, to help identification of the species. Most of the names followed Linnaeus, but in the case of the garden pea, he quoted Pisum sativum L. as a synonym of Lathyrus oleraceus, and under it he described the wild variety, Pisum arvense L., recognised by Tournefort, writing that it appeared to be naturalised in Alsace. Therefore
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Wellcome Open Research, 2023
Background
Premodern medical texts are an invaluable source for scholars from humanities and scie... more Background
Premodern medical texts are an invaluable source for scholars from humanities and sciences. However, they are usually not accessible as few scientists with an interest in premodern materia medica are also qualified philologists. Therefore, a balance has to be struck to translate these texts while preserving information on how reliable we believe a given translation to be. In this paper, we conduct a case study on the vernacular version of Ioannes archiatrus.
Methods
The present study forms part of the output of a multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award combining humanities and sciences. We deployed a multi-layer tagging system to systematise pharmaceutical terminology and to translate these terms while providing confidence factors for individual words. In a second step, we used AntConc, a freeware concordance software, to analyse our primary source and visualise patterns in the text.
Results
Our methodology created a readable text that made it possible for the reader to check confidence factors. It also allows our translation and tagging to be recycled for further research.
Conclusions
Our methods provide a tool that allows to balance the need to translate and the necessary caution about translated plant and mineral names. Our approach is transferable and it can be modified to suit the needs of other primary sources.
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Throughout the world, traditional medical systems continue to be important to healthcare. They va... more Throughout the world, traditional medical systems continue to be important to healthcare. They vary greatly in their underlying beliefs, but almost all share the use of herbal medicines as a central practice. Ancient Mesopotamia – the area of modern-day Iraq and adjoining regions – offers a special opportunity to study such medical practice in antiquity. Many thousands of clay tablets survive, some over 5,000 years old, bearing texts relating to life in the past.
Drawing on the expertise of Assyriologists, botanists and archaeologists, An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal explores the deep history of plants in traditional medicine and offers a groundbreaking reassessment of existing research.
Combining methods from the humanities and science, the authors provide a concise overview of ancient Mesopotamian culture and herbal lore, along with new identifications of Assyrian and Babylonian herbal medicines, focusing on 25 case studies.
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Ethnopharmacological relevance
In recent decades, the study of historical texts has attracted res... more Ethnopharmacological relevance
In recent decades, the study of historical texts has attracted research interest, particularly in ethnopharmacology. All studies of the materia medica cited in ancient and medieval texts share a concern, however, as to the reliability of modern identifications of these substances. Previous studies of European or Mediterranean texts relied mostly on authoritative dictionaries or glossaries providing botanical identities for the historical plant names in question. Several identities they suggest, however, are questionable and real possibility of error exists.
Aim of the study
This study aims to develop and document a novel and interdisciplinary methodology providing more objective assessment of the identity of the plants (and minerals) described in these resources.
Materials and methods
We developed an iterative experimental approach, using the 13th century Byzantine recipe text John the Physician's Therapeutics in its Commentary version (JC) as a case study. The methodology has six stages and relies on comparative analyses including statistical evaluation of botanical descriptions and information about medicinal uses drawn from both historical and modern sources. Stages 1–4 create the dataset, stage 5 derives the primary outcomes to be reviewed by experts in stage 6.
Results
Using Disocorides’ De Materia Medica (DMM) (1st century CE) as the culturally related reference text for the botanical descriptions of the plants cited in JC, allowed us to link the 194 plants used medicinally in JC with 252 plants cited in DMM. Our test sample for subsequent analyses consisted of the 50 JC plant names (corresponding to 61 DMM plants) for which DMM holds rich morphological information, and the 130 candidate species which have been suggested in the literature as potential botanical identities of those 50 JC plant names. Statistical evaluation of the comparative analyses revealed that in the majority of the cases, our method detected the candidate species having a higher likelihood of being the correct attribution from among the pool of suggested candidates. Final assessment and revision provided a list of the challenges associated with applying our methodology more widely and recommendations on how to address these issues.
Conclusions
We offer this multidisciplinary approach to more evidence-based assessment of the identity of plants in historical texts providing a measure of confidence for each suggested identity. Despite the experimental nature of our methodology and its limitations, its application allowed us to draw conclusions about the validity of suggested candidate plants as well as to distinguish between alternative candidates of the same historical plant name. Fully documenting the methodology facilitates its application to historical texts of any kind of cultural or linguistic background.
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Journal of Museum Ethnography, 2016
This paper is concerned with economic botany collections, which may not appear to be of immediate... more This paper is concerned with economic botany collections, which may not appear to be of immediate interest to the museum ethnographer. However, such biocultural collections were, and still are, very much concerned with the accumulation of ethnographic material culture and offer an alternative insight into the notion of ‘nature and culture,’ one in which nature and culture are juxtaposed within a single interpretative
framework.
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History of botany & collections by Mark Nesbitt
By foregrounding questions of circulation, the chapters in Mobile Museums collectively represent a fundamental shift in the understanding of the history and future uses of museum collections. The book addresses a variety of different types of collection, including the botanical, the ethnographic, the economic and the archaeological. Its perspective is truly global, with case studies drawn from South America, West Africa, Oceania, Australia, the United States, Europe and the UK. Mobile Museums helps us to understand why the mobility of museum collections was a fundamental aspect of their history and why it continues to matter today.
Premodern medical texts are an invaluable source for scholars from humanities and sciences. However, they are usually not accessible as few scientists with an interest in premodern materia medica are also qualified philologists. Therefore, a balance has to be struck to translate these texts while preserving information on how reliable we believe a given translation to be. In this paper, we conduct a case study on the vernacular version of Ioannes archiatrus.
Methods
The present study forms part of the output of a multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award combining humanities and sciences. We deployed a multi-layer tagging system to systematise pharmaceutical terminology and to translate these terms while providing confidence factors for individual words. In a second step, we used AntConc, a freeware concordance software, to analyse our primary source and visualise patterns in the text.
Results
Our methodology created a readable text that made it possible for the reader to check confidence factors. It also allows our translation and tagging to be recycled for further research.
Conclusions
Our methods provide a tool that allows to balance the need to translate and the necessary caution about translated plant and mineral names. Our approach is transferable and it can be modified to suit the needs of other primary sources.
Drawing on the expertise of Assyriologists, botanists and archaeologists, An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal explores the deep history of plants in traditional medicine and offers a groundbreaking reassessment of existing research.
Combining methods from the humanities and science, the authors provide a concise overview of ancient Mesopotamian culture and herbal lore, along with new identifications of Assyrian and Babylonian herbal medicines, focusing on 25 case studies.
In recent decades, the study of historical texts has attracted research interest, particularly in ethnopharmacology. All studies of the materia medica cited in ancient and medieval texts share a concern, however, as to the reliability of modern identifications of these substances. Previous studies of European or Mediterranean texts relied mostly on authoritative dictionaries or glossaries providing botanical identities for the historical plant names in question. Several identities they suggest, however, are questionable and real possibility of error exists.
Aim of the study
This study aims to develop and document a novel and interdisciplinary methodology providing more objective assessment of the identity of the plants (and minerals) described in these resources.
Materials and methods
We developed an iterative experimental approach, using the 13th century Byzantine recipe text John the Physician's Therapeutics in its Commentary version (JC) as a case study. The methodology has six stages and relies on comparative analyses including statistical evaluation of botanical descriptions and information about medicinal uses drawn from both historical and modern sources. Stages 1–4 create the dataset, stage 5 derives the primary outcomes to be reviewed by experts in stage 6.
Results
Using Disocorides’ De Materia Medica (DMM) (1st century CE) as the culturally related reference text for the botanical descriptions of the plants cited in JC, allowed us to link the 194 plants used medicinally in JC with 252 plants cited in DMM. Our test sample for subsequent analyses consisted of the 50 JC plant names (corresponding to 61 DMM plants) for which DMM holds rich morphological information, and the 130 candidate species which have been suggested in the literature as potential botanical identities of those 50 JC plant names. Statistical evaluation of the comparative analyses revealed that in the majority of the cases, our method detected the candidate species having a higher likelihood of being the correct attribution from among the pool of suggested candidates. Final assessment and revision provided a list of the challenges associated with applying our methodology more widely and recommendations on how to address these issues.
Conclusions
We offer this multidisciplinary approach to more evidence-based assessment of the identity of plants in historical texts providing a measure of confidence for each suggested identity. Despite the experimental nature of our methodology and its limitations, its application allowed us to draw conclusions about the validity of suggested candidate plants as well as to distinguish between alternative candidates of the same historical plant name. Fully documenting the methodology facilitates its application to historical texts of any kind of cultural or linguistic background.
framework.
By foregrounding questions of circulation, the chapters in Mobile Museums collectively represent a fundamental shift in the understanding of the history and future uses of museum collections. The book addresses a variety of different types of collection, including the botanical, the ethnographic, the economic and the archaeological. Its perspective is truly global, with case studies drawn from South America, West Africa, Oceania, Australia, the United States, Europe and the UK. Mobile Museums helps us to understand why the mobility of museum collections was a fundamental aspect of their history and why it continues to matter today.
Premodern medical texts are an invaluable source for scholars from humanities and sciences. However, they are usually not accessible as few scientists with an interest in premodern materia medica are also qualified philologists. Therefore, a balance has to be struck to translate these texts while preserving information on how reliable we believe a given translation to be. In this paper, we conduct a case study on the vernacular version of Ioannes archiatrus.
Methods
The present study forms part of the output of a multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award combining humanities and sciences. We deployed a multi-layer tagging system to systematise pharmaceutical terminology and to translate these terms while providing confidence factors for individual words. In a second step, we used AntConc, a freeware concordance software, to analyse our primary source and visualise patterns in the text.
Results
Our methodology created a readable text that made it possible for the reader to check confidence factors. It also allows our translation and tagging to be recycled for further research.
Conclusions
Our methods provide a tool that allows to balance the need to translate and the necessary caution about translated plant and mineral names. Our approach is transferable and it can be modified to suit the needs of other primary sources.
Drawing on the expertise of Assyriologists, botanists and archaeologists, An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal explores the deep history of plants in traditional medicine and offers a groundbreaking reassessment of existing research.
Combining methods from the humanities and science, the authors provide a concise overview of ancient Mesopotamian culture and herbal lore, along with new identifications of Assyrian and Babylonian herbal medicines, focusing on 25 case studies.
In recent decades, the study of historical texts has attracted research interest, particularly in ethnopharmacology. All studies of the materia medica cited in ancient and medieval texts share a concern, however, as to the reliability of modern identifications of these substances. Previous studies of European or Mediterranean texts relied mostly on authoritative dictionaries or glossaries providing botanical identities for the historical plant names in question. Several identities they suggest, however, are questionable and real possibility of error exists.
Aim of the study
This study aims to develop and document a novel and interdisciplinary methodology providing more objective assessment of the identity of the plants (and minerals) described in these resources.
Materials and methods
We developed an iterative experimental approach, using the 13th century Byzantine recipe text John the Physician's Therapeutics in its Commentary version (JC) as a case study. The methodology has six stages and relies on comparative analyses including statistical evaluation of botanical descriptions and information about medicinal uses drawn from both historical and modern sources. Stages 1–4 create the dataset, stage 5 derives the primary outcomes to be reviewed by experts in stage 6.
Results
Using Disocorides’ De Materia Medica (DMM) (1st century CE) as the culturally related reference text for the botanical descriptions of the plants cited in JC, allowed us to link the 194 plants used medicinally in JC with 252 plants cited in DMM. Our test sample for subsequent analyses consisted of the 50 JC plant names (corresponding to 61 DMM plants) for which DMM holds rich morphological information, and the 130 candidate species which have been suggested in the literature as potential botanical identities of those 50 JC plant names. Statistical evaluation of the comparative analyses revealed that in the majority of the cases, our method detected the candidate species having a higher likelihood of being the correct attribution from among the pool of suggested candidates. Final assessment and revision provided a list of the challenges associated with applying our methodology more widely and recommendations on how to address these issues.
Conclusions
We offer this multidisciplinary approach to more evidence-based assessment of the identity of plants in historical texts providing a measure of confidence for each suggested identity. Despite the experimental nature of our methodology and its limitations, its application allowed us to draw conclusions about the validity of suggested candidate plants as well as to distinguish between alternative candidates of the same historical plant name. Fully documenting the methodology facilitates its application to historical texts of any kind of cultural or linguistic background.
framework.
KEYWORDS: Food composition • Plant identification • Plant nomenclature • Voucher specimens • Methodology • Taxonomy • Botany • Ethnobotany • Biodiversity and nutrition
J. Food. Comp. Analy. Nov 2010 23 (6) 486-498
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2009.03.001
sources, and sustainability of such ingredients used in theUnited Kingdom (UK). Research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, commencing in 1990 and involving 1,000 samples of individual potpourri ingredients from 12 UKmanufacturers and traders, revealed 546 different ingredients, representing up to 455 species, 289 genera, and over 100 families. Despite thewide taxonomic spread, several distinct plant part–family groups contributed the most potpourri ingredients: i.e., fruits from Arecaceae,
Fabaceae, Malvaceae, Pinaceae, Poaceae, and Rutaceae; seeds from Fabaceae; leaves from Arecaceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae; inflorescences from Asteraceae; as well as stems from cane, pith, timber, and pole wood. The vast majority of ingredients imported from Asia, especially India, were
byproducts from crops and wild harvested species used by the Indian herbal healthcare industry. Global conservation assessments are lacking for 80% of wild collected Indian potpourri species, and those that have assessments are mainly abundant and widespread in ruderal or wetland habitats and
of Least Concern (IUCN 2013), except Pterocarpus marsupium and P. indicus (Fabaceae), which are vulnerable globally, and Calamus andamanicus (Arecaceae) and Oroxylum indicum
(Bignoniaceae), which are vulnerable nationally within India. A further eight, primarily medicinally traded species, are regarded as threatened within individual Indian states. Additional unique potpourri ingredients were sourced from Thailand, but only about one-tenth of study samples
were from Africa, Middle East, Europe, America, and Australia. Temporal studies of potpourri ingredients could reflect changes in the use and abundance of species in other trades such as medicines, food, and materials.
referring to 502 species sampled (‘sample plants’), each associated with one or more nutritional data.We also tested whether or not a botanist was involved in the identification of ‘difficult to identify’ species. Of 502 sample plants, only 36 followed best practice for plant identification, and 37 followed best practice for plant nomenclature. Overall, 27% of sample plants were listed with names that are not in current use,
or are incorrectly spelt, or both. Only 159 sample plants would have been found from a database search of
citations and abstracts. Considering the need for food composition data from wild and locally cultivated food species, and the cost of analysis, researchers must identify, name and publish species correctly. Drawing on the fields of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, comprehensive recommendations are given for best practice.