Otieno Joseph, Abihudi Siri, Veldman Sarina, Nahashon Michael, van Andel Tinde, de Boer Hugo J
Institute of Traditional Medicine, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, P.O. Box 65001, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Department of Organismal Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18D, SE-75236, Uppsala, Sweden.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2015 Feb 19;11:10. doi: 10.1186/1746-4269-11-10.
Medicinal plants are traded as products with vernacular names, but these folk taxonomies do not always correspond one-to-one with scientific plant names. These local species entities can be defined as ethnospecies and can match, under-differentiate or over-differentiate as compared to scientific species. Identification of plant species in trade is further complicated by the processed state of the product, substitution and adulteration. In countries like Tanzania, an additional dimension to mapping folk taxonomies on scientific names is added by the multitude of ethnicities and languages of the plant collectors, traders and consumers. This study aims to elucidate the relations between the most common vernacular names and the ethnicity of the individual traders among the medicinal plant markets in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions in Tanzania, with the aim of understanding the dynamics of vernacular names in plant trade.
A total of 90 respondents were interviewed in local markets using semi-structured interviews. The ethnicity of each respondent was recorded, as well as the language of each ethnospecies mentioned during the interviews. Voucher collections and reference literature were used to match ethnospecies across languages.
At each market, the language of the majority of the vendors dominates the names for medicinal products. The dominant vendors often represent the major ethnic groups of that region. Independent of their ethnicity, vendors offer their products in the dominant language of the specific region without apparently leading to any confusion or species mismatching.
Middlemen, traders and vendors adapt their folk classifications to those of the ethnic groups of the region where they conduct their trade, and to the ethnicity of their main customers. The names in the language of the traders are not forgotten, but relegated in favor of the more salient names of the dominant tribe.
药用植物作为具有俗名的产品进行交易，但这些民间分类法并不总是与科学植物名称一一对应。这些当地物种实体可被定义为民族物种，与科学物种相比，它们可能匹配、区分不足或区分过度。产品的加工状态、替代和掺假使贸易中植物物种的鉴定更加复杂。在坦桑尼亚这样的国家，植物采集者、贸易商和消费者的众多种族和语言为将民间分类法映射到科学名称上增加了一个额外的维度。本研究旨在阐明坦桑尼亚达累斯萨拉姆和坦噶地区药用植物市场中最常见俗名与个体贸易商种族之间的关系，以了解植物贸易中俗名的动态变化。
在当地市场对90名受访者进行了半结构化访谈。记录了每位受访者的种族，以及访谈中提到的每个民族物种的语言。使用凭证收集和参考文献来跨语言匹配民族物种。
在每个市场，大多数摊贩使用的语言主导着药用产品的名称。占主导地位的摊贩通常代表该地区的主要民族。无论其种族如何，摊贩都以特定地区的主导语言提供产品，显然不会导致任何混淆或物种不匹配。
中间商、贸易商和摊贩会根据他们进行贸易的地区的民族群体以及主要客户的种族来调整他们的民间分类。贸易商使用的语言中的名称并没有被遗忘，而是为了支持占主导地位部落的更突出的名称而被搁置。
