Ethnobotanical Treasures of the Dominican Republic

A quick post to highlight a new video up from Ina Vandebroek of New York Botanical Garden. This is about how a botella, a mix of herbs is made for healthcare. If you don’t speak Spanish there are English captions for the video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3sC4F8F_II%5D

One of the things I was thinking as the video went on was that some of these plants could be analysed for their effect. What I hadn’t thought about were the consequences of that. There’s a line in the write up: No scientific plant names were added to protect the Intellectual Property Rights of local communities. It’s a problem that I hadn’t thought of. As an ethnobotanist you’re working to record and possibly protect a community’s use of plants, but that knowledge itself could be used to deprive them.