As an ethnobotanist, I study traditional plant use. Together with several PhD students, postdocs and MSc students, I am involved in a number of research projects: Traditional rice varieties grown in the Guianas, Historical herbaria and botanical drawings in the Leiden treasure rooms, Wild food collection by hunter-gatherers in Cameroon, Migrations of plants and people, Medicinal and ritual plant use.
Keywords
Ethnobotany, historic collections, medicinal plants, ritual plants, Suriname, taro, traditional rice, West and Central Africa, wild food plants
Researchinterest
Listening to the story behind a useful plant helps me to discover people’s unwritten history. Documenting traditional knowledge on wild food and local crop landraces helps us to understand how people have been survived on hunter-gathering and self-sufficient agriculture in the past centuries.
Within the Clusius chair at Leiden University, I am involved in the study of historic herbaria and botanical drawings, made by early scientists and explorers in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. These collections often include medicinal and otherwise useful plants from tropical countries. Examples are botanical drawings of medicinal plants, documented by VOC ship doctors in Ceylon, the book herbaria of the German explorer Leonhard Rauwolf, The Historia Naturalis Brasiliensis (1648) for Dutch Brazil, and several other historic herbaria made by anonymous botanists.
In cooperation with the Biosystematics group at Wageningen University and several international partners, I do research on traditional rice cultivars grown by Maroons in Suriname and French Guiana. Genetic research on traditional rice cultivars can show the migration routes of people's and plants, and exchange of cultivars among different ethnic groups.
Currenttopics
- Traditional rice landraces grown by Aucan and Saramaccan Maroons in Suriname and French Guiana (with Eric Schranz, Marieke van de Loosdrecht, Nicholaas Pinas, Harro Maat, Robin van Velzen).
- Migration of taro (Colocasia esculenta) from Africa to the New World and back t Europe(with Ilaria Grimaldi and Qiong Fang)
- Historic herbaria in the treasure room of Naturalis (with Anastasia Stefanaki and Aleid Offerhaus):
- The En Tibi herbarium (1558)
- Herbaria of Leonhard Rauwolf (1535-1596)
- Herbaria Simone D'Oignies (ca. 1730)
- Zierikzee herbarium (ca. 1720)
- Ethnobotany of the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (with Mariana de Campos Francozo and Mireia Alcantara Rodriguez)
- Wild edible plants eaten by Baka people in southeast Cameroon (with Sandrine Gallois and Amanda Henry)
- Traditional herbal medicine (with Mei Wang and Bob Jia).
- Amazonian body ornaments made from seeds (with Caroline Fernandes Caromano)
Keypublications
- van Andel, TR, H Maat, NM Pinas. 2023. Maroon Women in Suriname and French Guiana: Rice, Slavery, Memory. Slavery & Abolition, 1-25
- Peripato, V., Levis, C., ...ter Steege, H., van Andel, TR et al. 2023. More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia. Science 382 (6666): 103-109.
- Stefanaki, A., Porck, H., Grimaldi, I. M., Thurn, N., Pugliano, V., Kardinaal, A., ... & van Andel, T.R. (2019). Breaking the silence of the 500-year-old smiling garden of everlasting flowers: The En Tibi book herbarium. PloS one, 14(6), e0217779.
- Grimaldi, I.M., S. Muthukumaran; G. Tozzi; A. Anastasi; P.J. Matthews; N. Boivin; T.R. Van Andel. 2018. Literary evidence for taro in the ancient Mediterranean: a chronology of names and uses in a multilingual world. PLoS ONE 13(6): e0198333.
- Vorstenbosch, T., de Zwarte, I., Duistermaat, L., Andel, T.R. van. 2017. Famine food of vegetal origin consumed in the Netherlands during World War II. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 13:63.
- Levis, C., F.R.C. Costa, F. Bongers, M. Peña-Claros, C.R. Clement, A.B. Junqueira, E.G. Neves, … T.R. van Andel…. H. ter Steege. 2017. Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Science 355 (6328): 925-931.
PhDsupervision
Several PhD students are active in the field of Ethnobotany under my supervision
- Charlotte van 't Klooster (LUMC, Leiden University) Plant use among Saramaccan Maroons, Suriname, PhD thesis 2022.
- Mireia Alcantara Rodriguez (Archeology, Leiden University) ERC Brasiliae project, PhD thesis 2023.
- Bob Jia (Naturalis, Leiden University) Histpric collections of Chinese Materia Medica
- Susanne Masters (Leiden University) Harvest of orchids for salep production
- Nicholaas Pinas (Naturalis, Wageningen University) Maroon rice
- Isabela Pombo Geertsma (Utrecht University). Witchcraft plants in the past and present
- Lisa Johnson (Utrecht University) Growing tropical fruits in 18th century Leiden.
- Aleid Offerhaus (Naturalis, Leiden University) 18th century herbaria in the Leiden treasure rooms
- Qiong (June) Fang (Wageningen University) Taro diversity and acridity
Teachingactivities
- Organization of the course Ethnobotany (Wageningen University) every year in June
Guest lectures in the course Plant Families of the Tropics (Leiden University) every year in January
In themedia
All media coverage and interviews are posted on my website.
Fieldwork in Cameroon. Picture: Thomas Heger