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ETHNOBOTANY
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People and Plants: Ethnobotany in the 21st century
Pathway 01 — ETHNOBOTANY
Pathway 03 — plant medicine traditions
People and Plants: Ethnobotany in the 21st Century
From Amazonian sacred plants to the quantitative frontiers of modern research — Michael A. Coe maps the full arc of ethnobotany as a living discipline, grounded in cultures, communities, and the scientists who shaped it.
● 6 modules
● 26 lessons
● 1 hr 17 min
● All levels
Michael A. Coe, PhD
Ethnobotanist
course overview
“Plants are not passive resources — they are protagonists in human history. This course asks you to see them that way: through the eyes of the cultures who have lived alongside them for millennia, and through the methods of a science still learning how much it doesn’t yet know.”
what you will learn
Grasp the foundational concepts, historical development, and scientific underpinnings of ethnobotany as the study of plant-people interrelationships
Explore the rich cultural diversity of plant use through case studies — from Mesoamerican ceremony to Andean and Amazonian Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Investigate the spiritual, ritualistic, and symbolic significance of plants — including sacred and teacher plants such as Coca and Ayahuasca — across healing traditions
Recognize the critical importance of preserving traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and plant biodiversity in the face of globalization and habitat loss
Gain insights into modern interdisciplinary research methods, including quantitative approaches and hypothesis-driven models used to study plant-people socio-ecological systems
Be introduced to the key figures who have shaped ethnobotany — from Schultes and Plowman to contemporary researchers — and understand the discipline’s ongoing evolution
course sYllabus
free preview — module lesson 1
watch free
Case Study: The Shipibo-Conibo people and their deep-rooted connection with plants
Drawing on his own fieldwork among the Shipibo-Conibo in the Ucayali province of Peru, Michael Coe examines how plant knowledge functions beyond utility — in textile designs inspired by plant spirits, in animistic cosmologies where all living beings teach and heal, and in the ayahuasca-based shamanic practices that integrate the physical and spiritual realms. This lesson demonstrates why understanding plants in human societies requires long-term presence in the field, not just cataloguing use.
aprox: 18 minutes
about the instructor
Michael A. Coe, PhD
Ethnobotanist
Michael A. Coe earned his B.S. in ethnobotany from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in 2015, received the Richard Evans Schultes Research Award in 2016 for his ayahuasca research, and completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in botany — focusing on evolution, ecology, and conservation biology — at the same institution. His research centers on medicinal plant use in the Peruvian Amazon, where he tests theories related to cultural keystone species, use-pressure on medicinal plants, and the sustainability of ayahuasca harvesting in close collaboration with indigenous communities. He brings both rigorous field science and genuine reverence for traditional ecological knowledge to every lesson in this course.
Amazonian ethnobotany
Ayahuasca & sacred plants
Cultural keystone species
Conservation biology
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