thnobotany is the scientific study of dynamic relationships among people, plants, and environments. In most places in the world 60–100% of plant species are useful to people as food, medicines, construction materials, fibers, dyes, resins, latex, and so forth. 80% of the world’s population depends on traditional medicine. Plants are the basis of human subsistence and culture, inspiring the late Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Dr. Edgar Anderson, to publish his classic Plants, Man and Life.

Contemporary work at the William L. Brown Center comprises a number of over-lapping ethnobotanical themes:

• Plant-people interactions
• Plant genetic resources
• Ethnobotany for conservation and sustainable development
• Human dimensions of biodiversity (especially traditional management of biodiversity)
• Traditional knowledge and science
• Traditional medicine and public health
• Crop evolution and diversification
• Collections in ethno- and economic botany
• Capacity building

Research and training initiatives, evolving over time, presently including work in the following geographic areas:

• China/Tibet
• Bolivia

• Peru
• Ecuador

• Iran
• India
• Nepal

Ethnobotany research and training subjects include:

• Sustainable harvests and cultivation of threatened medicinal plants;
• Alpine ethnobotany and gradient analyses
• Ethnobotany of Tibetan sacred landscapes
• Market ethnobotany
• Traditional Tibetan land use and biodiversity management
• Indigenous agriculture and change
• Ethnobotany of indigenous fallow and secondary forest succession and management
• Non-timber forest products
• Capacity building in Ethnobotany