Palms and the Prototypicality of Trees

Palms, as a group of plants, are of comparative ethnosemantic interest, as they are sometimes formally classified as trees in folk and scientific classifications and sometimes not; sometimes labelled as a separate group of plants and sometimes not. In European languages palms are nowadays unproblematically described as trees, but they are definitely not prototypical cognitively. This is what one would expect in a geographic area where they are non-endemic, infrequent or at the extremes of their range. During the early period of European expansion, when many previously unknown species were being reported, introduced and recognised as economically important, palms were not labelled as a single group, nor were they necessarily considered trees. The acceptance of palms as trees in European folk classifications appears to have accompanied their recognition as a distinct type of plant. In the tropics the situation in which potential human classifiers of palms find themselves is different.

Palm · African Botany and Ecology Studies · Ethnobotanical and Medicinal Plants Studies · Psychology

• Ontology and values anchor indigenous and grey nomenclatures

  Open Access•Catherine Kendig•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2020

  Add to list

• The Nature of Folk-Botanical Life Forms

  Open Access•Atran, Scott Atran•American Anthropologist•1985

  Add to list