Abstract Studies on the cultural importance of unconventional food plants (UFP) have been scarce, in contrast to a vast literature focusing on medicinal plants. We adopted the widely used criterion of cultural importance to study UFP used in two quilombola communities in Bahia State, northeastern Brazil. Free-listing was applied to identify known/used food plants in the communities, and semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect information about them. Statistical analyses were performed using a correlation matrix of importance values. A random sample of the numbers of citations per species indicated a strong correlation between cultivated and wild species. The average ages of the two communities were similar, but indicated an influence of age on their knowledge of non-conventional plants and their consumption. Both wild and cultivated species have relevant cultural importance. Deforestation, the lack of availability of unconventional food plants, and the ease of access to conventional and industrialized foods are all directly related to the low consumption of UFP, pointing to a lack of nutritional and health information in those communities. (UFP scarce State Brazil Freelisting Free listing knownused known semistructured semi structured them values similar nonconventional non Deforestation

ABSTRACT Non-indigenous communities are particularly insightful in terms of understanding the process of healing plant acquisition and loss. This study explores the traditional medicinal plant knowledge and use of a long-isolated, African-descended community in the Atlantic rainforests of northeastern Brazil. We investigated the primary plant species used and their therapeutic applications. We hypothesized that women and the oldest members of the community would be the most knowledgeable about medicinal plants. We carried out semi-structured interviews and walk-in-the-woods plant collecting techniques with 74 informants. We identified 133 ethnospecies of plants used to treat a wide variety of illnesses. The most commonly used plant parts were leaves; the most common form of preparation was as infusion. As anticipated, medicinal plant knowledge generally increased with age. However, there was no significant gender difference in plant knowledge. We attribute this to the increasingly similar livelihood roles and geographical spaces occupied by men and women in the community. There was, however, a trend for women to be more knowledgeable about the healing properties of herbaceous and cultivated plants. Increasing contact with the outside world has resulted in a confluence of traditional, often African-derived healing therapies, with the novel healing plant knowledge and allopathic medicine of outsiders.