The Use of Forested Lands to Provide Minor Forest Products Minor forest products are those products other than timber of commercial value which can be obtained from trees and other plants in the rainforest. Powell13 in 1976 described in detail the ethnobotany of the Papua New Guinea people with regard to the staple and supplementary crops, the agricultural systems present and the wild plant resources available for utilisation as food and as raw materials for products of material culture. There are many useful plants described by Powell including: • Narcotics, stimulants and intoxicants. • Medicinal plants. • Ritual and magic. • Art. • Tools and weapons. • Hunting and fishing. • Canoes and rafts. • House building. • Food preparation including containers and vessels. • Cordage, bark cloth and other textiles. • Clothing and personal ornamentation. Although, outside the scope of this project, for those readers interested in a detailed description of the various plants used by Papua New Guineans, read: • Powell 1976:108-112 for a listing of over 250 kinds of food plants. • Powell 1976:135-147 for a listing of medicinal plants. Many of these products lie on the borderline between forestry and agriculture. The following chapters describe some of these plants and their applications. Perhaps an outstanding example is rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), which provides an important but still minor forest product in it’s native Brazil, but which in Malaysia, PNG and other southeast Asian countries provides an agricultural crop of unequalled importance. New Rubber Tree Plantation Galley Reach Central Province PNG. Photo credit Dick McCarthy 2000.
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Powell J M 1976 Ethnobotany in Paijmans K(editor) New Guinea Vegetation. ANU Press, CSIRO Canberra. 13
