Higher-order categories in Brunei Dusun Ethnobotany: the Folk-Classification of Rainforest Plants

Abstract

For more than 100 years botanists, agricultural scientists, and foresters working in island Southeast Asia have collected indigenous names for plants (e.g. Burkill 1935, Corner 1940, Ochse 1931, Quisumbing 1951). The reasons for this are plain. There needs to be some provisional way of identifying species new to science, scientists need to communicate with local people about plants, and various government departments require a convenient set of names for efficient administration. Unfortunately, it is also hazardous to use names and other isolated fragments of local knowledge about plants outside of the ethnobotanical context from which they are drawn (Ellen, this volume). Terms and associated data have not always been collected carefully, sometimes displaying linguistic and cultural ignorance. In the case of Brunei, Ashton’s (Ashton 1964, also Pukul & Ashton n.d.) use of indigenous terms for trees keyed to scientific terms is open to confusion. Native terms are used as if they were vernacular synonyms for species names, but there is an unexplained overlap of names. In some cases where there are no known vernacular names new ones are suggested.