Heavy deposits of charcoal and associated Zea pollen recovered from the Aguada Petapilla in the Copán Valley of western Honduras strongly support Hugh Iltis's hypothesis concerning the early domestication and use of maize. Evidence of burning and cultivation appear at approximately 2600–2700 b.c., predating the earliest direct archaeological evidence for human occupation of the region by more than 1,000 years. These Copán data are in close agreement with two other sediment cores from Honduras, and also with maize macrofossils recently recovered from dry deposits in El Gigante Cave.

Effective conservation programs require data on both biodiversity and resource use. The rapid loss of biologically diverse areas adds urgency to the task. This study tests a forest valuation technique that provides essential data in a very short time on local resource use that can serve as a foundation for integrated conservation and development programming. This rapid interview method was tested by comparison with an intensive six-month technique. The data analyzed included the number of plant and animal species used and the calculated value in dollars per hectare per year ($/ha/yr) of different forest types for 67 families in three communities in the northern Peruvian Amazon. While the rapid ethnobiological method gave an accurate list of the most widely used species, accurate data on the quantities collected of these species and their relative values were substantially different from those in the long-term study. At present, the rapid survey is recommended only when necessary to provide data on the most useful species in order to prevent imminent forest destruction. We urge continued study of rapid methods to improve the accuracy of this potentially important conservation tool.

This paper reports an ethnobotanical investigation, performed between 1999 and 2002, to determine the wild food plants traditionally used in the province of Madrid (central Spain). One hundred and twenty-three vascular species belonging to 31 families were at one time used as vegetables, wild fruits, in the making of beverages, as seasonings, or as other preparations. Wild vegetables formed the largest group, with Scolymus hispanicus, Silene vulgaris, and Rumex pulcher the most frequently cooked vegetables, and Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum and Montia fontana the most commonly used in salads. Also common was the consumption of asparagus and several species of climbing plants such as Bryonia dioica, Tamus communis, and Humulus lupulus. Ethnobotanical novelties included Sonchus crassifolius, the young sprouts of which were used in salads, and Inula salicina, used to make herbal tea. Some ecological and cultural aspects of the collection of wild plants for food are discussed, as well as the relationships between the food and medicinal uses of some species.

In order to explore the domestication and ethnobotany of Luffa aegyptiaca, collections were made from two regions where wild plants and the domesticate occur: an area in and near southern China, represented by Yunnan Province (China) and northern Laos; and the Indian subcontinent, represented by southeastern Nepal. The allozyme evidence was inconclusive with respect to the region of domestication due to the small sample size of wild accessions from Nepal but suggests a single place of domestication. Principal Components Analysis of morphological characters revealed that some accessions of the domesticate from Yunnan and Laos were more similar to the wild type than were those from Nepal. Compared to the wild type, the domesticate had non-bitter, larger, and indehiscent fruits, flowered earlier, and had thicker fruit vascular bundles. The nutritional content of traditional cultivars was superior to that of a single modern cultivar that was examined.

The immature fruits of domesticated Luffa acutangula (L.) Roxb. are a common vegetable in Asia and India. To learn more about traditional cultivars, accessions were collected from southern Yunnan Province of China, northern Laos, and southeastern Nepal, and assessed for various parameters of genetic diversity. The size and shape of the fruits and seeds varied considerably. A form that we found cultivated only in Nepal bore clusters of small fruits that are produced by hermaphrodite flowers. Plants produced male flowers first, and the first node to bear flowers varied from the second to the twenty-seventh. Twenty-nine allozyme loci were assayed. Within L. acutangula one allozyme locus was polymorphic. Luffa acutangula and L. aegyptiaca are fixed for different alleles at nine loci, indicating that they are completely reproductively isolated from each other.

This study focuses on the use of botanical pesticides in Cajamarca, Peru. Fieldwork was conducted in four Quechua communities located in different ecological zones. Interviews and collection of specimens yielded 64 poisonous species and 22 species considered useful because of their toxic properties. The yellow fever mosquito bioassay was applied to methanolic extracts of the latter 22 species to determine their toxicity to Aedes aegypti L. larvae. Most extracts showed weak to moderate activity, although three were found to have strong pesticidal activity.

This paper examines the abundance and Aboriginal use of botanical non-timber forest products in the Gwich'in Settlement Area in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Informants indicated that wild berries are important to Gwich'in diets and an important factor in culture and traditional land use. People collected mostly cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus), blueberries (Vaccinium uliginosum), and lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). The total quantities collected were estimated to be greater than other published accounts of berry gathering by northern Aboriginal peoples in North America. The total collected by the 450 households in the year 2000 was about 16,000 L. Inventories of wild berries on the landscape suggest that substantial quantities could be collected for commercial production, although the between-year supply can show considerable variation.