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BackgroundMedicinal plants are traded as products with vernacular names, but these folk taxonomies do not always correspond one-to-one with scientific plant names. These local species entities can be defined as ethnospecies and can match, under-differentiate or over-differentiate as compared to scientific species. Identification of plant species in trade is further complicated by the processed state of the product, substitution and adulteration. In countries like Tanzania, an additional dimension to mapping folk taxonomies on scientific names is added by the multitude of ethnicities and languages of the plant collectors, traders and consumers. This study aims to elucidate the relations between the most common vernacular names and the ethnicity of the individual traders among the medicinal plant markets in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions in Tanzania, with the aim of understanding the dynamics of vernacular names in plant trade.MethodsA total of 90 respondents were interviewed in local markets using semi-structured interviews. The ethnicity of each respondent was recorded, as well as the language of each ethnospecies mentioned during the interviews. Voucher collections and reference literature were used to match ethnospecies across languages.ResultsAt each market, the language of the majority of the vendors dominates the names for medicinal products. The dominant vendors often represent the major ethnic groups of that region. Independent of their ethnicity, vendors offer their products in the dominant language of the specific region without apparently leading to any confusion or species mismatching.ConclusionsMiddlemen, traders and vendors adapt their folk classifications to those of the ethnic groups of the region where they conduct their trade, and to the ethnicity of their main customers. The names in the language of the traders are not forgotten, but relegated in favor of the more salient names of the dominant tribe.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1746-4269-11-10) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Chikanda is a traditional dish made with wild-harvested ground orchid tubers belonging to three orchidioid genera, Disa, Satyrium and Habenaria, all of which are CITES appendix II-listed. Identification of collected orchid tubers is very difficult and documentation of constituent species in prepared chikanda has hitherto been impossible. Here amplicon metabarcoding was used in samples of six prepared chikanda cakes to study genetic sequence diversity and species diversity in this product. Molecular operational taxonomic unit identification using similarity-matching reveals that species of all three genera were present in the chikanda samples studied. Disa was present in all of the samples, Satyrium in five out of six and Habenaria in one of the samples, as well as a number of other plants. The fact that each sample contained orchids and the presence of a wide variety of species from all genera in this traditional dish raise serious concerns about the sustainability of this trade and the future of wild orchid populations in the main harvest areas. This proof-of-concept study shows that Ion-Torrent PGM is a cost-effective scalable platform for metabarcoding using the relatively long nrITS1 and nrITS2 regions. 123Biodivers Conserv (2017) 26:2029-2046 DOI 10.1007/s10531-017-1343 Furthermore, nrITS metabarcoding can be successfully used for the detection of specific ingredients in a highly-processed food product at genus level, and this makes it a useful tool in the detection of possible conservation issues arising from commercialized trade or processed plant products.

In bryophytes a morphological species concept is still most commonly employed, but delimitation of closely related species based on morphological characters is often difficult. Here we test morphological species circumscriptions in a species complex of the moss genus Racomitrium, the R. canescens complex, based on variable DNA sequence markers from the plastid (rps4-trnT-trnL region) and nuclear (nrITS) genomes. The extensive morphological variability within the complex has led to different opinions about the number of species and intraspecific taxa to be distinguished. Molecular phylogenetic reconstructions allowed to clearly distinguish all eight currently recognised species of the complex plus a ninth species that was inferred to belong to the complex in earlier molecular analyses. The taxonomic significance of intraspecific sequence variation is discussed. The present molecular data do not support the division of the R. canescens complex into two groups of species (subsections or sections). Most morphological characters, albeit being in part difficult to apply, are reliable for species identification in the R. canescens complex. However, misidentification of collections that were morphologically intermediate between species questioned the suitability of leaf shape as diagnostic character. Four partitions of the molecular markers (rps4-trnT, trnT-trnL, ITS1, ITS2) that could potentially be used for molecular species identification (DNA barcoding) performed almost equally well concerning amplification and sequencing success. Of these, ITS1 provided the highest species discrimination capacity and should be considered as a DNA barcoding marker for mosses, especially in complexes of closely related species. Molecular species identification should be complemented by redefining morphological characters, to develop a set of easy-to-use molecular and non-molecular identification tools for improving biodiversity assessments and ecological research including mosses.

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The National Herbarium of the Netherlands houses a 17th century, bound herbarium containing 51 dried specimens from Suriname, which was composed by the well‐known botanist Paul Hermann (1646–1695). This is considered as the oldest documented herbarium collection not only for Suriname but for the Guianas region. Most specimens are accompanied by (pre‐Linnaean) Latin or vernacular names and sometimes by Latin descriptions of the plants and their uses. To assess the importance of this collection for the present‐day flora and ethnobotany of Suriname, we identified all specimens (one by using ancient DNA analysis), translated the Latin texts, traced back the origin of the herbarium in national archives, 17th century and modern literature and compared plant names and uses with present‐day ethnobotanical data. We digitized the entire herbarium and made it available online (http://www.hermann‐herbarium.nl). The specimens were probably collected around 1687 by a certain Hendrik Meyer, who had a keen interest in botany and indigenous plant use. The 48 species in the herbarium are almost all useful plants: cultivated crops, wild edible fruits, medicinal plants, timber trees, fish poison, colorants and roof thatch material. Most species are used similarly today, and more than half of the vernacular names still exist in the region. The presence of Abelmoschus esculentus and Sesamum indicum in the herbarium prove the early establishment of African food plants in the emerging plantation economy of Suriname. Unlike Hermann's collections from Ceylon and the Cape, this herbarium was never seen by Linnaeus and therefore does not contain any type specimens.