Abstract
Since earliest times, humans have used botanicals to affect health, and have brought into cultivation a great diversity of plants. For the large number that have been managed explicitly as medicines, pharmacognosists have uncovered substantial pharmacologic potential. Increasingly, we come to understand that these self-same plants are used in other contexts as well-as foods and cosmetics, and to meet horticultural objectives. That this extends the range of circumstances through which people are exposed to active plant constituents helps us to comprehend better the complex paradigms through which people interpret their biotic environments. This paper offers a multicontextual framework for assessing the physiologic import of plant utilization through attention to the interdependent uses of plants by real populations in specific cultural contexts.