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By the mid-seventeenth century, images of natural elements that originated in Dutch Brazil circulated in Europe. These were often included in art collections (the Libri Picturati) and natural history treatises (the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae and the India Utriesque re Naturale et Medica, 1658). The plant woodcut images in these books constituted (icono) type specimens and played a significant role in disseminating scientific botanical knowledge. We present a systematic analysis of their origins by cross-referencing the visual and textual sources related to Dutch Brazil. To do so, we used our previous botanical identifications of the portrayed plants, published sources, and digital archival material. The plant woodcuts accounted for 529 images, which corresponded to 426 taxa. We created a PDF booklet to visualize the (dis-) similarities of the woodcuts with the Libri Picturati and other visual sources. Substantial differences in the visual-making methodology exist between the two treatises (1648, 1658). In the first book, most of the images were available from Dutch Brazil and carved into the woodcuts, while most of these woodcuts were reused in the second one. The Indigenous Tupi-based plant names accompanying the images were crucial when arranging the sources, and portraying as much botanical information as possible was commonly the goal. Freshly picked, living plants, dried branches, fruits, and seeds were used to represent the megadiverse Brazilian flora, even when these belonged to species originating from other regions. Despite not being recognized for their contribution, Indigenous Brazilians and enslaved Africans were essential in the visual knowledge-making processes that later resulted in these natural history collections. As several sources remain lost and many histories yet untold, further archival studies and collaborative projects are pertinent to reveal the missing pieces of this conundrum.

In tropical rainforests, access to and availability of natural resources are vital for the dietary diversity and food security of forest-dwelling societies. In the Congo Basin, these are challenged by the increasing exploitation of forests for bushmeat, commercial hardwood, mining, and large-scale agriculture. In this context, a balanced approach is needed between the pressures from forest exploitation, non-timber forest product trade and the livelihood and dietary behavior of rural communities. While there is a general positive association between tree cover and dietary diversity, the complex biocultural interactions between tropical forest food resources and the communities they sustain are still understudied. This research focuses on the knowledge and use of wild food plants by the forest-dwelling Baka people in southeast Cameroon. By using two different sets of methods, namely ex-situ interviews and in-situ surveys, we collected ethnographic and ethnobotanical data in two Baka settlements and explored the diversity of wild edible plants known, the frequency of their consumption, and potential conflicts between local diet and commercial trade in forest resources. Within a single Baka population, we showed that the in-situ walk-in-the-woods method resulted in more detailed information on wild food plant knowledge and use frequency than the ex-situ methods of freelisting and dietary recalls. Our in-situ method yielded 91 wild edible species, much more than the ex-situ freelisting interviews (38 spp.) and dietary recalls (12 spp.). Our results suggest that studies that are based only on ex-situ interviews may underestimate the importance of wild food plants for local communities. We discuss the limitations and strengths of these different methods for investigating the diversity of wild food plant knowledge and uses. Our analysis shows that future studies on wild food plants would profit from a mixed approach that combines in-situ and ex-situ methods.

We reveal the enigmatic origin of one of the earliest surviving botanical collections. The 16th-century Italian En Tibi herbarium is a large, luxurious book with c. 500 dried plants, made in the Renaissance scholarly circles that developed botany as a distinct discipline. Its Latin inscription, translated as "Here for you a smiling garden of everlasting flowers", suggests that this herbarium was a gift for a patron of the emerging botanical science. We follow an integrative approach that includes a botanical similarity estimation of the En Tibi with contemporary herbaria (Aldrovandi, Cesalpino, "Cibo", Merini, Estense) and analysis of the book's watermark, paper, binding, handwriting, Latin inscription and the morphology and DNA of hairs mounted under specimens. Rejecting the previous origin hypothesis (Ferrara, 1542-1544), we show that the En Tibi was made in Bologna around 1558. We attribute the En Tibi herbarium to Francesco Petrollini, a neglected 16th-century botanist, to whom also belongs, as clarified herein, the controversial "Erbario Cibo" kept in Rome. The En Tibi was probably a work on commission for Petrollini, who provided the plant material for the book. Other people were apparently involved in the compilation and offering of this precious gift to a yet unknown person, possibly the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I. The En Tibi herbarium is a Renaissance masterpiece of art and science, representing the quest for truth in herbal medicine and botany. Our multidisciplinary approach can serve as a guideline for deciphering other anonymous herbaria, kept safely "hidden" in treasure rooms of universities, libraries and museums.

Taro, Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott, is a vegetable and starchy root crop cultivated in Asia, Oceania, the Americas, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Very little is known about its early history in the Mediterranean, which previous authors have sought to trace through Classical (Greek and Latin) texts that record the name colocasia (including cognates) from the 3rd century BC onwards. In ancient literature, however, this name also refers to the sacred lotus, Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn. and its edible rhizome. Like taro, lotus is an alien introduction to the Mediterranean, and there has been considerable confusion regarding the true identity of plants referred to as colocasia in ancient literature. Another early name used to indicate taro was arum, a name already attested from the 4th century BC. Today, this name refers to Arum, an aroid genus native to West Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Our aim is to explore historical references to taro in order to clarify when and through which routes this plant reached the Mediterranean. To investigate Greek and Latin texts, we performed a search using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL), plus commentaries and English and French translations of original texts. Results show that while in the early Greek and Latin literature the name kolokasia (Greek κολοκάσια) and its Latin equivalent colocasia refer to Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn., after the 4th century AD a poorly understood linguistic shift occurs, and colocasia becomes the name for taro. We also found that aron (Greek ἄρον) and its Latin equivalent arum are names used to indicate taro from the 3rd century BC and possibly earlier.

Folk perceptions of health and illness include cultural bound syndromes (CBS), ailments generally confined to certain cultural groups or geographic regions and often treated with medicinal plants. Our aim was to compare definitions and plant use for CBS regarding child health in the context of the largest migration in recent human history: the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We compared definitions of four CBS (walk early, evil eye, atita and fontanels) and associated plant use among three Afro-Surinamese populations and their African ancestor groups in Ghana, Bénin and Gabon. We expected plant use to be similar on species level, and assumed the majority to be weedy or domesticated species, as these occur on both continents and were probably recognized by enslaved Africans. Data were obtained by identifying plants mentioned during interviews with local women from the six different populations. To analyse differences and similarities in plant use we used Detrended Component Analysis (DCA) and a Wald Chi-square test. Definitions of the four cultural bound syndromes were roughly the same on both continents. In total, 324 plant species were used. There was little overlap between Suriname and Africa: 15 species were used on two continents, of which seven species were used for the same CBS. Correspondence on family level was much higher. Surinamese populations used significantly more weedy species than Africans, but equal percentages of domesticated plants. Our data indicate that Afro-Surinamers have searched for similar plants to treat their CBS as they remembered from Africa. In some cases, they have found the same species, but they had to reinvent the largest part of their herbal pharmacopeia to treat their CBS using known plant families or trying out new species. Ideas on health and illness appear to be more resilient than the use of plants to treat them.

In spite of the strong role of traditional medicine in childcare in the pluralistic healthcare system in Western Africa, little information is known on mothers' domestic plant knowledge. Identifying local perspectives and treatments of children's illnesses, including folk illnesses, is essential to having a comprehensive understanding of how mothers make healthcare treatment decisions. We aimed to identify which infant illnesses Beninese and Gabonese mothers knew to treat with medicinal plants and for which illnesses they sought biomedical care or traditional healers.We conducted 81 questionnaires with mothers in Bénin and Gabon and made 800 botanical specimens of cited medicinal plants. We calculated the number of species cited per illness and the proportion of participants knowledgeable on at least one herbal remedy per illness. Using qualitative data, we described folk illnesses in each country and summarized responses on preferences for each of the three healthcare options.Participants from both countries were most knowledgeable on plants to treat respiratory illnesses, malaria, diarrhea, and intestinal ailments. Mothers also frequently mentioned the use of plants to encourage children to walk early, monitor the closure of fontanels, and apply herbal enemas. Major folk illnesses were atita and ka in Bénin and la rate and fesses rouges in Gabon. Traditional healers were reported to have specialized knowledge of cultural bound illnesses. Malaria was frequently cited as an illness for which mothers would directly seek biomedical treatment.Mothers largely saw the three systems as complementary, seamlessly switching between different healing options until a remedy was found. Folk illnesses were found to give insight into local treatments and may reveal important neglected diseases. Due to high reported levels of knowledge on treating top statistical causes of infant mortality and folk illnesses, mothers' medicinal plant knowledge should be included in the analysis of healthcare-seeking behavior for childcare.