Medicinal plant use thrives even in urban centers like New York City. At the upcoming SciCafe on Wednesday, March 2, Dr. Ina Vandebroek of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden will discuss the role of medicinal plants in primary healthcare among indigenous peoples in the Bolivian Amazon and immigrant communities in New York City. She recently answered a few questions about her upcoming talk.
What is ethnobotany, and how is it practiced?
Ethnobotany is the science that documents how people perceive, manage, and use plants for healthcare, nutrition, clothing, construction, tools, ritual and social life. An ethnobotanist is part anthropologist and part botanist. He or she shares life in the field with local community members, conducts interviews, and collects the plants that are mentioned by participants to make herbarium specimens that cross-link common plant names with botanical plant names.
What kinds of ailments are medicinal plants commonly used for?
Medicinal plants are used for almost any existing ailment. The flu and common cold, for example, are ailments for which medicinal plants are often used, almost anywhere in the world. There appears to exist a relationship between the prevalence of health conditions in a region and the use of medicinal plants. For example, in the tropics there is a higher incidence of medicinal plant use for diarrhea and skin conditions than in temperate regions.
Butterflies that belong to the Heliconius genus, known colloquially as longwings, have discovered the secret to butterfly longevity. Like most members of the order Lepidoptera, longwings sip nectar from flowers using a straw-like organ called a proboscis. What distinguishes them from fellow butterflies — and moths — is that longwings can broaden their diet beyond these sweet liquids — which, in turn, is thought to extend their life.
That’s because Heliconius butterflies are able to ingest pollen by secreting enzymes onto their proboscides. When these enzymes mix with pollen grains, they create a protein-rich liquid that the butterfly can absorb. Longwings spend hours collecting and processing pollen grains and depositing them at other stops along the way. The plants pay them back, big time: the amino acids found in pollen are thought to increase egg production and lifespan up to eight months, making longwings one of the longest-living groups of butterflies in the world.
Their lifespan isn’t what gives these butterflies their name, however; their elongated wings do. Longwings are also sometimes called passion flower butterflies because they favor the passion vine both as a place to lay eggs and as a source of food. The leaves of the passion flower give the longwings their characteristic toxicity: longwing caterpillars feed on the plant, acquiring toxins that they retain through adulthood as protection from predators throughout their lives.
Cydno longwings can be distinguished from other Heliconius butterflies by their coloring: they are mainly black with white or yellowish markingson their forewings and blue on the hindwings. To make matters more confusing, different Heliconius species often exhibit similar color patterns. This defense mechanism, known as Müllerian mimicry, is a form of interspecies imitation used to ward off natural enemies.
The first major update of the American Museum of Natural History: Cosmic Discoveries iPhone App was released on February 15 as part of an ongoing effort to create a gallery of the universe that fits in the palm of your hand. The updated app features five new chapters, which combine fascinating images with in-depth descriptions of astrophysical phenomena, the people who discovered them, and the technology that makes it all possible.
The new stories describe the extremes of star formation (“Massive Stars” and “Brown Dwarfs”), galaxies like our own Milky Way (“Spiral Galaxies”) and the dense clumps of stars that swarm around them (“Globular Clusters”), as well as astronomical phenomena caused by runaway thermonuclear explosions (innocuously called “Novae”).
Download the app today in order to automatically be notified about new updates via the App Store. More updates will be released every few months.
Learn more about the app here, and download it for free from iTunes here.
Anyone who has listened to jazz — a uniquely American musical form that is fundamentally interpretive, improvisational and creative — will describe the way it seems to stimulate the mind. And in recent years, new scientific research has shown that improvisation really does activate the parts of the brain that enhance self-expression and lower inhibitions.
On Saturday, February 19, from 12:30 to 5 pm, the American Museum of Natural History will honor jazz’s trailblazing artists and musicians and highlight the ways jazz can stimulate and enhance the brain with a special Global Weekends event, Saluting Our Jazz Elders, which will feature performances by celebrated jazz vocalist Melba Joyce, New Amsterdam Music Association, Joey Morant, and McCollough Sons of Thunder, as well as conversations throughout the day with Robert O’Meally, co-founder of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University about the connections between jazz, the brain, and education.
Stephen C. Quinn, senior project manager in the Museum’s Department of Exhibition, recently traveled to the eastern Congo basin to visit the exact site depicted in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals’ mountain gorilla diorama which is based on paintings, photographs, and specimens collected in the field by explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley and his team in 1921 and 1926.
Like the artists on Akeley’s 1926 expedition, Quinn used field sketches and paintings to document the area’s flora and fauna, recording the changes that have taken place and reinforcing the important role artists play in habitat conservation and environmental education. In this eight-minute highlight video from a recent talk at the Museum, Quinn shares finished works, including a panoramic plein air painting.
Watch the video, which includes footage from the field, here:
