The Establishment of a Botanical Garden for Medicinal Plants in Tihosuco
Phase 1 - Identifying the medicinal plants which are used by the people of Tihosuco and selecting those which will be included in the garden
When the building, which now houses the Caste War museum, was renovated from ruins in 1993, a small raised garden was also included in the renovations. This garden remained largely unused for many years, except for growing crops of Habanero chillies and other occasional plantings. The director of the museum, Carlos Chan Espinosa, had plans to develop the site into a botanical garden for medicinal plants since around 1996, but the opportunity for realising these plans never arose.
The site for the botanical garden, which was well maintained and periodically cleared of weeds, along with Carlos' ideas and plans, provided a good basis for conducting an ethnobotanical project in Tihosuco.
After the objectives of the project had been discussed, the next step was for myself to spend time in Tihosuco. It was important to become familiar with the village and people, and for them to get used to a stranger being there, to know about the project and to being interviewed. Villagers were elected by Carlos to interview, who were to become the 'informants'. The people chosen were known by Carlos to be medicinal herb users, ranging from casual users of herbs to yerbateros, or herbalists.
The interviews were based on questionnaires used by the Autonomous University of Yucatan for their ethnobotanical database (Banco de Datos Etnobotanicos de la Peninsula de Yucatan - BADEPY). The questionnaires are designed to record such details such as: plant use; Mayan and other vernacular names; parts used; method of preparation; other plants combined in preparation; dose and method of use; plant management and details about the informants themselves. This information would serve to create an empirical book about local medicinal herb use and to develop the BADEPY programme.
Semi-structured interviews were made which allowed the informants to talk about the herbs in a general way they felt natural with, whilst still aiming to answer specific questions. A translator was needed for some of the informants to translate from Maya to Spanish, this person often being an employee of the museum or a member of the informants family. The interview often began with looking at one herb and the disease it cured, then identifying other herbs used to treat the same disease. Another common form of interview was to go on a 'wander' through gardens, the village or the local forest, and to identify and discuss the medicinal herbs encountered.
Photographs of the informants made during interviews:
The semi-structured form of interview left gaps in the questionnaire, especially when a lot of herbs were encountered within one interview, which usually lasted from one to two and a half hours. These gaps were partly filled in second or third interviews made with the informants later in the year, or when the information was checked together by the group shortly before the final compiling of the book.
In addition to recording information, specimens of many of the plants were taken for pressing and drying. These were taken to the University of Merida for identifying their taxonomic nomenclature, or scientific name, and including within their herbarium 'Alfredo Barrera MarÌn'. More on this can be found by clicking on taking and preparing samples for a herbarium.
By May 1999 the majority of the informants chosen had been interviewed. The information obtained was compiled to provisionally present to them, to give an idea of what the book wanted to achieve. Once an actual example of the work had been presented to all involved, the interest grew for developing the project further.
One of the main ideas for using the information at this stage was to determine which plants would be included within the botanical garden and to draw a proposed plan of their planting positions. However, it was eventually agreed that the informants found it easier to bring in and establish the plants themselves which they wanted to include within the garden. This encouraged a greater community involvement in creating the garden (but it also created a lot more work for myself later on in the project!)