Of People and Plants: A Botanical Ethnography of Nokopo Village, Madang and Morobe Provinces, Papua New Guinea.

Dwyer, Peter D.

Nokopo is a Yopno village in the Finisterre Range, Huon Peninsula, of eastern Papua New Guinea. The people living there are gardeners and pig husbanders who know and use many of the species of plant found between altitudes of 1200 and 2400 metres. In Of People and Plants Christin Kocher Schmid records much of Nokopo plant lore.

Kocher Schmid used participant observation, interviews, surveys and collection to derive a `botanical ethnography' of Nokopo people. She recorded 525 Nikopo plant terms (including synonyms), idendtifying 36 percent of these to the level of biological species and 68 and 99 percent, respectively, to the levels of genus and family. Given the state of botanical taxonomy in Papua New Guinea this was a considerable achievement.

Chapter 2 describes vegetation patterns and altitudinal zonation in Nakopo territory; it includes brief accounts of social organization and notions of time and space together with a more extended treatment of religion. Chapters 3 and 4 form the bulk of the book. The former deals with garden and tree crops, most of which are associated with grasslands. Different types of garden, and their successional phases, provide an organizing theme and, for each primary category of plants (e.g. bamboos, bananas. yams, cash crops), there are details of Nokopo taxonomy, cultivation procedures and the variety of secular and sacred uses. Chapter 4 turns to plants of the forest and organizes the material on the basis of primary plant forms such as trees, vines, ferns and epiphytes. The emphasis here is on mundane uses but many connections of a mythological or ritual kind are also reported. About 90 Nokopo taxa that are used for body decoration are listed.

The first part of Chapter 5 summarizes Nokopo taxonomy of plants. Kocher Schmid attempts to map Nokopo perceptions and nomenclature onto the general system of ethnobiological categories (e.g. life form, generic, species and varietal) developed by Brent Berlin and others. She detects some lack of fit, though part of this might be resolved by more careful separation of Nokopo categories that are formally taxonomic from others that refer to structural components of forest. This material could have been placed early in the book, providing a useful framework for much that followed. The second part of Chapter 5 is also synthetic. It describes the use of plants as an aesthetic medium that is expressed, for example, in ways women arrange crops in gardens, men adorn themselves and certain rituals are structured. Criteria that influence the selection of plant parts, shapes and colours for use as body decoration, and a tendency to mimic pleasing forest forms within gardens or at the village, are discussed.

A final brief chapter explores some past and recent impacts on the botanical environment experienced by Nokopo people. There is no discussion, however, of the implications these impacts have had, or will have, for ways in which Nokopo perceive and interact with that environment. The book concludes with a bibliography and with appendices that catalogue plants according to primary uses and both plants and birds according to Nokopo and scientific nomenclature.

Kocher Schmid has assembled a vast body of data. The book is full of exotic gems but they are difficult to locate and there is too little synthesis. We learn of a fungus, used as an antibiotic, that grows on the subterranean nymphs of cicadas and is regarded as part of the cicada. An unidentified tree, minam is said to provide food to only one animal; the latter is a species within the only known toxic genus of birds and raises the possibility that Nokopo people have detected a correlation between diet and toxicity that has eluded scientists. There are many cases where the same name is used to label forms within two categories of plants (e.g. gingers and palmlilies) or within a category of plants and another of animals; sometimes both entities are needed to fulfil particular esoteric functions. And there is intriguing reference to one class of dancing that, in the past, celebrated the birth of a first child but, nowadays, celebrates the arrival of the first tourist flight of the season!

For many years Kocher Schmid has worked in museums. Her past shows in the organization of this book. The substantive chapters are like a series of dioramas. We enter a yam garden: in one place we see people cultivating, cooking and eating; in another yams are displayed to celebrate a marriage or baptism. Charts record a long list of named varieties and depict ceremonies associated with planting and harvesting. We are stimulated and puzzled. But our curiosity is never satisfied. The next diorama beckons ... bamboos, where the theme is material culture ... or vegetables, where we learn about colonial introductions. We are not guided toward a synthesis of all that has been displayed. Only the recurring theme of the aesthetic use of plants holds the attention and this is undoubtedly Kocher Schmid's primary anthropological contribution. A different structure might have given the book more coherence.

Of People and Plants represents an enormous effort by a dedicated observer. It will prove valuable as a source book to many workers. As a source book, however, the absence of an index was a serious omission. English is not Kocher Schmid's first languge but, while this adds `colour' to the text, there is seldom ambiguity.