Ethnobotany Education, Opportunities, and Needs in the U.S.

There is more interest in ethnobotany today, than at anytime in the discipline’s history. Ethnobotany, however,suffers from many deficiencies, especially the lack of researchsupport, educational opportunities, and a theoreticalbasis. Ethnobotanists should expand the definition ofethnobotany to include all plant-people interactions, notjust those of traditional societies. They also must integratemore effectively with colleagues in related disciplines andpromote ethnobotany’s relevance to Introductory Botanyand other courses. Ethnobotany and ethnobiology arenatural links to conservation biology, resource management,and environmental education. An undergraduateethnobotany track could provide ideal training for medicine.To be competitive, prospective students need to preparebetter for graduate school. They should have a firmfoundation in the botanical and anthropological sciences,as a minimum. If ethnobotany is to become a mature discipline,it must develop a theoretical framework while notabandoning its descriptive history. Expanding ethnobotany’sscope to include all plant and human interactionsgreatly increases the funding, research, and job opportunitiesfor the discipline. More importantly, there is no compellingintellectual argument for restricting ethnobotany’sreach to traditional cultures.