The Pacific Coastal Mountains of western North America have immense ethnobotanical significance. Since time immemorial, Indigenous Peoples have journeyed from permanent settlements in lowland regions to upland sites in order to harvest and process a range of plant resources –foods, materials and medicines– as well as to hunt and fish, and undertake spiritual activities. Two culturally significant montane areas, widely separated geographically, are described as case examples: pt-én'i (Botanie Valley) in Nlaka'pmx territory of southern interior British Columbia, famous for its abundance of edible root resources; and iwamkani, an iconic huckleberry picking location for the Klamath in southern Oregon. Patterns of montane use are notably consistent throughout the region. Indigenous People intentionally modified montane landscapes through fire and other means to enhance resource productivity and predictability. In turn, mountain environments and resources have significantly influenced Indigenous Peoples' lifeways and knowledge systems. The integrity of montane biocultural systems has been threatened by industrial development, fire suppression and, most recently, the changing global climate. Yet, montane areas remain as key elements of biocultural heritage and must be protected for continued social-ecological health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples.

Like other native Amazonian peoples, the Yanesha of eastern Peru conceive of plants and trees as having been primordial human beings transformed into their present form at the end of mythic times. The events that led to their transformation can be described as being either “sublime” or “grotesque.” Cultivated plants that underwent a sublime mode of transformation include manioc, the Yanesha staple, as well as maize, beans, peanuts, and cotton. These plants assumed their present form as the result of the self-transformation of powerful demiurges; a luminous, contained transformation that privileged the sensual capacities of the upper body. In contrast, the mode of transformation of barbasco, chili peppers, coca, peach palm, and yam falls on the side of the grotesque, and involves a series of immoral beings that had little control over the activities of their lower bodies. This article seeks to discern the Yanesha rationale behind this particular way of classifying plants. It proposes that sublime origin plants are those that were domesticated the earliest and have thus been part of Yanesha culture the longest. In contrast, those domesticated in more recent times –and thus less central to Yanesha cultural life– are attributed a more earthly, grotesque origin.

The domestication of Chenopodium in the Andean altiplano of South America was a complex process that took place during the Formative period (1800 B.C.-A.D. 400). We identified a new archaeological morphological type of Chenopodium sp. at the La Barca site, located in the Department of Oruro, Bolivia. We analyzed testa texture, margin configuration, beak prominence, seed diameter, and testa thickness using scanning electron microscopy. As a member of the same genus as Chenopodium quinoa, the identification of this new anthropogenic morphotype presents us with insights into the many complexities of the process of domestication and points towards selection occurring in multiple regions and different culture groups.

Enslaved African and African Americans in the American South during the 17th through 19th centuries lived within a social order established by plantation owners and reinforced through the control of food. Therefore, the ways slaves acquired their food and other subsistence goods demonstrates aspects of the plantation's social relations. This article examines the connection between slaves' subsistence strategies and plantation social relations at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest through the analysis of macrobotanical remains. Excavations at Poplar Forest uncovered a sub-floor pit of an antebellum slave cabin that was occupied from the 1840s through 1858 and possibly as late as the abolition of slavery. The seeds and wood indicate that the slaves' subsistence strategies included provisioning or receiving food from the plantation owner, production or slaves growing their own food, and procurement or the gathering of wild plants. By comparing the results from this sub-floor pit to analyses of macrobotanicals dating to Thomas Jefferson's ownership, I investigate aspects of plantation social relations at Poplar Forest and offer a better understanding of the social and natural environment in which the enslaved African Americans lived.

For ethnobiology as a field to achieve its full relevance in the scientific and social realms, ethnobiologists need to take stock of the field as a collective. In 2008, the members of the International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE), Society of Ethnobiology (SoE) and the Society of Economic Botany (SEB) were surveyed to determine the demographics of the societies, member interests and priorities, and the future they envision for each society and for the field as a whole. The three societies share relatively few members, suggesting that the societies fulfill substantively different roles for ethnobiologists. The ISE strives to be a meeting ground for all stakeholders internationally and draws more biologists. The SoE was founded with an academic emphasis and draws most members from North America and anthropological traditions. SEB is also an academically-oriented society with a strong focus on botany. We call for synergies and networking among these societies and a broader ethnobiology constituency to leverage the insights and applications of the field to contemporary ecological and social crises.

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) offers a broad range of information that conservationists, development practitioners, non-governmental organizations, and researchers value greatly. However, LEK has an intrinsic value to its holders; it represents their capacity to adapt and survive in remote areas, while anchoring their cultural continuity within a specific ecological region. The authors set out to describe in this essay the ethnobotanical knowledge of sarrapia (Dipteryx odorata [Aubl.] Willd.) or tonka bean among the inhabitants of three non-indigenous communities of the Lower Caura River Basin, southern Venezuela. The results of this study suggest that there is a strong association between the livelihood of the Caura's residents and the consecutive annual cycle of this species. This association is demonstrated by how the locals: 1. make interconnections between the biological cycle of sarrapia and climatic and ecological variables; 2. discriminate between wild and cultivated sarrapia tree stands; 3. provide accurate estimates on the total production of sarrapia beans per tree stand every year; 4. implement the appropriate skills throughout the delicate process of extracting and treating the beans; and 5. regulate the access and usufruct rights to the wild and cultivated sarrapia trees.

Edible insects are an integral part of the Traditional Food System of the Popoloca people of Los Reyes Metzontla in Mexico. Investigation of the knowledge associated with the gathering, preparation, consumption and classification (hot-cold) of edible insects shows that insect gathering is closely related with other activities such as subsistence agriculture, firewood collection and animal husbandry. These activities involve visits to the scrubland where, in addition, many wild foods are gathered depending upon their temporal availability. The people of Los Reyes Metzontla consume at least 17 species of insects. One of them, (Mormidea (Mormidea) notulata, Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is a new record for the Edible Insects Database in Mexico and a new record for the state of Puebla.