ABSTRACT
This paper proposes an analytical framework for the ethnobotanical study of human-plant relationship as a case study of domestication, understanding domestication not as an event, but as a process of person-plant interaction. Sixth grade primary school students, who sometimes drop-out of school to marry, appear to have as complete a knowledge of ensete landraces as older Ari people. Therefore, for the time being, the people can only estimate the genetic identity of ensete landraces, first through comparison of very rough but measurable morphological characteristics, and secondly from the information provided by people who have a long experience of cultivating ensete. It is more difficult to assess the degree of variation in wild ensete than in the cultivated population. Their answers were all negative, not apparently realizing the utilitarian importance or practical usefulness of maintaining diversity in ensete landraces. The diversity can best be understood in terms of a kind of non-purposive causality born from the interactions between human beings and plants.
