Abstrakt
This paper deals with a brief historical sketch of ethnobotany and the use of some medicinal plants in Mexico or in a broader sense of the word in the so-called Mesoamerica and some areas of Central America (especially in Guatemala and Belize). Text attention to the fact that the ethnobotany is not only part of the so-called ethnoscience, but also ecological anthropology, political economy, and there is still more associated with the so-called multispecies ethnography, i.e., plants and other organisms (e.g. mushrooms) become equal actors of anthropological researches, like the animals in the so-called human animal studies.
Text focuses primarily on Mexico, where the ethnobotanical research has its roots in early colonial times and gently outlines some aspects of similarly focused researches in Guatemala and Belize, which is primarily bound with different Mayan groups. In conclusion, it concentrates its attention on a particular perspective that ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological researches offer in this area.