ETHNOBOTANY WEEDS AND YOU

THE more I read, collect propagate and plant, the further away I move from my peers.  I do not know if that is contamination, too much time in college, a victim of two cultures Spain and USA,  or plain childish curiosity.


Check the information below and follow your own path later. There is a lot left to do.


Titania is the one to blame.  This wise peer from down under, wrote a comment recently that left me thinking about weeds and nature in general.  Some become salt and water after five minutes, others remain as stimulant.


There are no blogs on ethnobotany, I have never seen one.  The same goes for black/negro bloggers. There is one in Barbados, a fashionista with blue royalty British blood. Buahaja bilingual laugh.


The scientific study of the relationship between people and plants is ethnobotany.

Ethnobotanists aim to describe and explain complex relationships between
cultures and (uses of) plants: focusing primarily on how plants are used, managed and perceived across human societies (e.g.) as foods; as medicines;
in divination; in cosmetics; in dyeing;
as textiles; in construction; as tools; as clothing, as currency; in literature; in rituals; and social life. * 

If you remember, I suffer from precocious amnesia,  the previous post was on weeds. Some of them. I bring you now others. Weeds or grasses, or gramineas have determined our life in the first and third worlds, directly or indirectly as in  goats, sheep, cows. 

Aegilops/Triticum, Hordeum vulgare, Secale cereale or wheat, barley and rye,
have been the pillars of our cultures and  diets in almost every continent.   But also the basis for raw spirits.


One thing that disturbs me in terms of comprehension is that anthropologists, do not pass judgment in terms of the cultures under study regarding the urge to use substances to get stone, trip, allucinate. However, most are illegal in our societies. These are liquid, solid, smoked, chewed or drank.


It is natural that our first world moved from the natural to the chemical since its view and perception of  nature is one of profits/alienation.  Therefore meta-amphetamines, for recreational usage and every other over priced remedy developed by pharmaceuticals, for any illness requiring medication.
  
One cures the disease, creating five/ten reactions of discomfort, requiring in turn other medications in a vicious circle...


That is that for now. Just scratching the surface.

* Wikipedia.

Apaga i fuites....