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Plant Names Encode Tašlḥit Knowledge of Morocco’s High Atlas Landscapes

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Abstract

Mediterranean landscapes have co-evolved with people: they often require human management to sustain biodiversity and local communities have developed detailed ecological knowledge about their surrounding ecosystems. We document plant names used by Tašlḥit speakers in the High Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco and explore how they encode local ecological knowledge of landscape and biodiversity as well as social histories. We conducted two complementary field studies in the communes of Imgdal and Ukaymdn, documenting plant names along with local definitions and perceptions of place, vegetation, and habitat and perceived trends of change in the local botanical environment through structured and semi-structured interviews. In Imgdal we used herbarium prompts, whilst in Ukaymdn we focussed on local definitions of ethnoecological categories. We analyse the diversity and multiplicity of life form and descriptive terms as well as plant names and compare these to scientific taxonomy. We conclude that current social and environmental change, especially climate change, could present a threat to the High Atlas biocultural diversity and local knowledge.

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Acknowledgements

Our most heartfelt thanks go to all those who agreed to participate in this study; this work belongs to them. This study would not have been possible without the essential support of the Global Diversity Foundation and Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association (MBLA). We would like to thank H. Rankou, H. Ait Baskad, F. Ait Iligh, H. Ait Ba, H. Isski, M. El-Haouzi, A. Ouarghidi and H. Benlafkih who made fieldwork possible; plant identification benefited from the expertise of S. Jury, and A. Ouhammou’s co-workers at the Regional Marrakech Herbarium (MARK), and we received important feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript from J. Birchall, U. D’Ambrosio and O.M. Grace. Many thanks to G. Castangia for making our Fig. 1.

Funding

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under the grant agreement no. 606895. We would like to acknowledge in kind support provided by the Darwin Initiative (Project Number 20 − 013: Medicinal root trade, plant conservation and local livelihoods in Morocco) and the Alpine Garden Society for a young researcher travel award. This study also presents some of the results of the R&D&I project “Per Africae gentes, deserta atque loca: Amazigh (Berber) Toponymy in Latin and Greek Sources (AGDAL)” (PID2020-114348GA-I00; PI: Carles Múrcia Sànchez, Serra Húnter fellow of Latin Philology, Institut del Pròxim Orient Antic, Universitat de Barcelona), funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain and the State Research Agency (AEI) /https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Biocultural Diversity, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Hanna Soldal, Gary J. Martin & Rajindra K. Puri

  2. Facultat de Filologia i Communicació, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Carles Múrcia

  3. Herbier Régional MARK, Faculté des Sciences Semlalia de Marrakech, Cadi Ayyad Université, Marrakech, Morocco

    Ahmed Ouhammou

  4. School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Julie A. Hawkins

  5. Global Diversity Foundation, Marrakech, Morocco

    Gary J. Martin

  6. IMBE, Aix Marseille Univ, Avignon Univ, CNRS, IRD, Marseille, France

    Irene Teixidor-Toneu

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  1. Hanna Soldal
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Contributions

H.S., I.T.T, G.J.M., J.A.H, and R.K.P designed the study. H.S. and I.T.T collected data. H.S., C.M., A.O., and I.T.T. analysed data. H.S. and I.T.T wrote the main manuscript with contributions by all co-authors. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Irene Teixidor-Toneu.

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Ethics approval

Approval from the Ethics Committee of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, was obtained for the work in Imgdal (Research Ethics Project Submission SBS14-1505). For the work in Ukaymdn, we obtained ethical approval from the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Soldal, H., Múrcia, C., Ouhammou, A. et al. Plant Names Encode Tašlḥit Knowledge of Morocco’s High Atlas Landscapes. Hum Ecol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-023-00434-9

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