BioOne.org will be down briefly for maintenance on 17 December 2024 between 18:00-22:00 Pacific Time US. We apologize for any inconvenience.
How to translate text using browser tools
1 April 2006 Plant Knowledge of the Shuhi in the Hengduan Mountains, Southwest China
Caroline S. Weckerle, Franz K. Huber, Yang Yongping, Sun Weibang
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

The Shuhi are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group of around 1,500 people living exclusively in the Shuiluo Valley, southwest China. We documented their plant knowledge concerning wild collected species, and analyzed food, medicine, and ritual uses. Overall, uses, collection sites, and use frequencies of 136 plant species were documented. The plants were divided in fodder (46 spp.), food (43 spp.), medicine (27 spp.), ritual plants (20 spp.), fuelwood (17 spp.), plants used for construction (8 spp.), ornamentals (2 spp.), and “others” (34 spp.). Food plants mainly consist of fruits and leafy vegetables, and the uses are comparable with those of other ethnic groups in the area. Knowledge about medicinal plants is relatively limited, since traditional Shuhi healers use ritual and other healing methods instead of medicinal plants. Ritual plants play an important role relative to human well-being. Villagers and ritualists use them to keep the environment clean of malevolent spirits and to maintain a good relationship with the deities. All habitats, from the dry shrub vegetation at the valley bottom up to the alpine shrub, are used for plant collection, but 87% of all species are collected in the near vicinity of the villages around the fields and in the dry shrub vegetation. Finally, we postulate two main factors influencing wild plant use among the Shuhi: cultural values and accessibility.

Caroline S. Weckerle, Franz K. Huber, Yang Yongping, and Sun Weibang "Plant Knowledge of the Shuhi in the Hengduan Mountains, Southwest China," Economic Botany 60(1), 3-23, (1 April 2006). https://doi.org/10.1663/0013-0001(2006)60[3:PKOTSI]2.0.CO;2
Received: 16 October 2005; Accepted: 1 November 2005; Published: 1 April 2006
JOURNAL ARTICLE
21 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
ethnobotany
food plants
medicinal plants
ritual plants
Shuiluo Valley
Tibeto-Burman
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top