Apparently it's not a very big place - I missed the exact dimensions - but plants abound here. While there are apparently around 1,400 native 'higher' plants in the UK, Popoluca has 2,700 and is a tropical montane cloud forest (are there lovelier words in the English language?) and a semi-dry oak forest. Sadly this doesn't really mean anything to me as I don't have enough knowledge to discriminate among the different types of forest but it all sounds lovely.

The Mixe (pronounced Meehe, the same sort of h as in Mehico) and Popolucan people are linguistically separated and so a plant which has the same cognate and use is likely to be part of a common history.

The team looked at plants that were used in gastrointestinal, dermatological and inflammatory disorders and commented that pharmacognosy can be searching for new medicines but also researching old ones - and not only for the benefit of 'Westerners' ss modern knowledge can augment local wisdom, benefitting the local community.

He showed a slide of an idealised cell (as in the basic unit that makes up all the organs in the body) and highlighted a number of biochemical pathways - the point of this was to demonstrate that each of the chains in the pathway means an opportunity to intervene. Each is a potential drug target and if any drugs are to have a future we need to know how they act and about any toxicity they might have.

A number of projects have been set up with a trust fund in place so that any drug subsequently discovered will give a financial benefit to the local community. The knowledge transfer is not just from local people to the western scientists though - both parties communicate information to others in the community - for example local radio, botanical gardens and teaching aids for secondary schools. One of the 'key informants' whose children / grandchildren hadn't been particularly enthusiastic to get involved in learning about local plant knowledge felt that he was sharing information 'with the future' by telling the students about his plant knowledge.

The team did a number of interviews with different people and from those selected a few for a more detailed discussion. A lot of hard work, from what I can gather! Anyway, a great talk that was well received :-)

I was able to go as a guest of the apothecaries' society because I rang up and asked - they reasoned that anyone who'd gone to that effort to find out about it on the web should get a chance of going! Normally all their talks, when held at their own premises, are free to the public however this isn't the case when it's hosted off-site. So that was nice - plus while there I joined up and became a friend of the Chelsea Physic Garden so I think everyone was a winner really.

Jo

Further reading:
Traditional herbal remedies symposium - Feb 2007, this is just the agenda and application form but has some interesting information:  http://www.ga-online.org/files/TradHerbMed2007/Announcement.pdf