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 * Plant use of the Motherland: Linking West African and Afro-Caribbean Ethnobotany **

//Medicinal and magic plant use in Suriname, Ghana, Benin and Gabon//

====This research is being conducted by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, section National Herbarium of the Netherlands in the period 2010-2015. It is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-Vidi-Vernieuwingsimpuls). The research team consists of Tinde van Andel (postdoc researcher), PhD students Alexandra Towns and Diana Quiroz, and several international MSc and BSc students. Medicinal and magic plant use will be compared between the Suriname Maroons and three of their ancestral countries in West Africa.This project is a follow-up of the project: "Medicinal Plants of Suriname: Changes in Plant Use after Migration to the Netherlands", funded by NWO-ALW Open Competition (2005-2009). ====

Some of the questions that we hope to answer during this five-year project are:

How African is Afro-Caribbean ethnobotany?
// Oso dresie // means `home remedy´ in Sranantongo, the local language in Suriname. It refers to medicinal plants and other traditional remedies, used for centuries by Suriname´s inhabitants.