ABSTRACT
Within sight of Mount Everest, between the Ganges River and the foothills of the Himalayas, grows a small climbing shrub with pinkish-white flowers, smooth leaves, and milky sap. Called in Hindi chota-chand, the shrub is rarely disturbed by the local people unless someone is bitten by a snake. Eighteenth-century botanists named the shrub Rauvolfia serpentina. The term “indigenous peoples” refers to peoples who follow traditional, nonindustrial lifestyles in areas that their ancestors have occupied for generations. Thus the European settlers of Australia or North America are not considered “indigenous,” while the Australian Aborigines and Native Americans are. For centuries people created durable representations of plants, etching them in stone or molding them in clay. Such images not only provide modern ethnobotanists with clues concerning plant origins but function as tangible indicators of the importance these peoples attached to plants.
