Introduction

Abstract

This collection explores the ethnobotany of the African diaspora. Drawing on papers presented at the 50th Annual Society for Economic Botany Meeting Symposium African Ethnobotany in the Americas, held in 2009 in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as contributions by other leading scholars on the subject, it explores the complex relationship between plant use and meaning, historical and current, among African-descended populations in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. A number of sophisticated studies have been carried out that support Herskovits' pioneering research on the African heritage of the Americas, but with several notable exceptions the reader will encounter in this volume, they have largely overlooked the importance of plants in African cultures and in the African diaspora. This collection is offered as a small contribution to filling this gap. It presents various aspects of the botanical legacy of Africans who played a significant part in the making of the modern world (Thornton 1992).