Surrounded by lustrous green foliage on every side, left, right, behind, ahead, and even in the canopy above, I walk through the rainforest, my machete cutting a thin trail for my feet as I walk along on damp, soft ground. Immediately on my right, I see a large bush with giant leaves like feathers, each diverging from a central point near the ground. I snap off one of the large leaves and stuff it into the leather pouch at my side. This is Anthurium schlechtendalii : Pheasant Tail. It’s tall, fan-like leaves can be mashed and applied to the skin to soothe the aches and pains of rheumatism and arthritis. I continue on. At the base of a palm tree on my left, I see a large tuber with artery-like veins extending from it, twining around the trunk of the tree and bearing heart-shaped leaves. I chop up the tuber and pull off a few leaves, placing them in my pouch as well. This is a Dioscorea alata: Wild Yam. As its cardiac form suggests, its leaves are useful for treating heart-ailments, and properties of its roots are used in birth control. As I step forward, my movement disturbs the leaves of a small shrub directly in front of me. Its leaves recoil and shrivel up, as if in fear of my feet. This is Mimosa pudica: Sleeping Mimosa. Its leaves possess a defense mechanism that makes them contract when they are touched. I snap off a few of the sleeping leaves and tuck them into my pouch. Just as they seem to fall asleep upon touch, the leaves can be boiled into a tea to help treat insomnia. Content with these three fascinating finds, I clicked the save button on my computer and closed my books for a quick break.
Okay, so I really wasn’t traipsing through the jungle with a machete this week looking for medicinal plants! However, during my internship at Belize Botanic Gardens, I had the opportunity to use their library and the internet to do research on the ethnobotanical use of Mayan plants. The garden would like to expand their Mayan display area and create interpretive signs that explain how the Mayans used the plants in the past, how they still use them today, and how recent scientific research affirms the validity of such use. In the two weeks of my internship, I researched over 80 plants, compiling information for these interpretive signs and even creating a few demo signs for potential use.
As I cut a trail through the intricacies of the botanical world I found in my books and on the computer, I was amazed by the creative capacities of our God. Diversity alone proclaims his glory, but he didn’t stop there! He went a step further and gave plants properties, many of them life-giving properties, that make them beneficial for human use!
It is somewhat startling, though, how little we know about the botanical world. Less than ½ of the 1% of the world’s 250,000 species of higher plants have been exhaustively analyzed for their chemical composition and medicinal properties. However, from that ½ of 1%, about 25% of all our prescription pharmaceuticals have been discovered! What might we be missing in the 99.5%? Not only are we ignorant about the uses of many of the plants, we are also ignorant about how to properly use the ones that we do know what to do with. Most plants that we use from the rainforest are not be sustainably harvested and thus are endangered.
As I studied the ways the Mayans used the rainforest, I was struck by how intimately they knew the plants: what they could be used for, when they should be harvested, and how much they could take to maintain sustainable use of the plants in the future. Their use of plants was strongly rooted in their faith. Even though their beliefs were pagan, it challenged me to think about how our Christian faith should be reflected in the way we use plants.
In Genesis 1, God gives man all of the plants of the earth for his use. As stewards of this gift, we should pursue an understanding of the botanical world that will allow us to use it wisely for things that will benefit humanity, while still leaving room for its conservation and the expression of God’s glory through it!
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