Human strategies for survival have long depended on an ability to identify and utilize plants. Generations of experience—success, failure and coincidence — have contributed to a very broad base of knowledge of individual plant species and properties which have been perceived as useful; but encroached upon by market demands and acculturation, both indigenous cultures and the diverse species to which they are tied have retreated to habitat remnants covering a fraction of their former area. It is becoming apparent that the preservation of remnants of biological diversity in large part depends on the knowledge and participation of the world's endangered cultures (Durning, 1992). The field of ethnobotany, studying the relation between people and plants, initially developed as a means of distilling and adopting valuable information founded on indigenous experience with plants. Although the research and exchange of valuable, and often profitable information, continues to be a central component of the field, applications for ethnobotanical information are rapidly expanding beyond colonial patterns of the extraction of resources and ideas.