Proyectos de Inventario

Floristic and ethnobotanical study of Nahuat communities

Administradores: Jonathan D. Amith (demca.biology@gmail.com)

This collection is part of a series of community-based floristic and ethnobotanical studies that form part of a project directed by Jonathan D. Amith. Two teams of two botanists each collected monthly (approx. 8 days/month) in: (1) San Juan Tahitic, municipality Zacapoaxtla, (2) Zongozotla, munic. Zongozotla,(3) Atlequizayán, munic. Atlequizayán, (4) Rosa de Castilla, munic. Zautla; (5) Cuauhtémoc, munic. Ayotoxco, (6) Yoloctzin and Paso Real, municipalities Tlatlauquitepec y Yaonahuac, respectively. The leaders of the two teams were Canek Ledesma Corral (1–3) and Miriam Jímenez Chimil (4–6). In addition, Ledesma was director in charge of managing and coordinating the two teams, overseeing goal attainment, administering the collections database and organizing the in situ photographs. The teams included two Nahuat-speaking biologists: Mariano Gorostiza Salazar (S. Mig. Tzinacapan) and Anastasio Sotero Hernández (S. Juan Tahitic) who in addition to their responsibilities for collection, photography, and maintaining field notes contributed their knowledge of Indigenous nomenclature, classification, and use of plants. In year 2, Osbel López Francisco, a Totonac speaker and biologist from Zongozotla, joined the project.

Status of documentation: Hueyapan material includes 88 collections by Miriam Jiménez and Mariano Gorostiza. Jonathan Amith and Hermelindo Salazar later collected 159 plants as part of an ethnobotanical study in the community of Nexpan. The Nahuat-speaking consultants were Manuel Bartolo Feliciano, Andrés Savelino Martínez, Berta Luna Landero, and Isidro Medina Santos. The results include 247 collections and 839 in situ photographs.

Funding support: Generous support for floristic and ethnobotanical research was provided by the National Science Foundation, Documenting Endangered Languages; National Endowment for the Humanities, Preservation and Access, and the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (Mexico).