Lep Host Plants as Botanical Medicine

Charles Gavette timbukt2 at excite.com
Tue Mar 2 19:15:05 EST 1999


The integration of phytopharmacy(botanical medicine) with lepidoptera seems
to me an interesting (and somewhat unexplored?) approach. Does there exist a
published work that does this? This idea asks a basic question as to the
relationship of certain moths and butterflies to their host plants, as well
as the relation to human use of the same plants in an ethnobotanical sense.
At the very least it could make for interesting lepidophile winter reading,
with the answers to questions such as: "What is the name of a butterfly of
the Great Dismal Swamp of America that can be found in intimate contact with
a potent yet little known antiviral plant?....or..."Are there
interferon-inducing plants that are hosts to silk moths, some of which are
sources for interferon themselves?"...or..."What Lepidoptera species feed on
a plant used in reverence in shamanic ceremonies in northest
China?"...or..."How does the Army worm and the Genus Anisota figure into an
approach to kidney and liver diseases?"...or..."What plant is host to a
species of Sphingidae that was traded in early America by the Pawnee indians
to other tribes as a medicine against venereal disease?"...etc.




_______________________________________________________
Get your free, private email at http://mail.excite.com/


More information about the Leps-l mailing list