The maintenance of wild edible plant gathering in a Mapuche community of Patagonia

The Mapuche communities of Argentina and Chile have a vast knowledge of use ful plants from temperate forests of Patagonia. However, present processes of transculturation and uprooting seem to have caused a decline in wild pla nt gathering. This is a case study of a Mapuche community that now lives ja r away from the forests that their ancestors inhabited. Nineteen families f rom the Rams Mapuche community (83% of the total population) were interview ed using a semi-structured questionnaire, with the aim of finding out which edible wild species are known and still used, and what factors, according to the people perception, have caused the decline. People mentioned a total of 49 edible wild plants including four types of resources: Araucaria arau cana seeds, the fruits and roots of bushes and herbs, and leaves of edible weeds. Factors such as the difficulty access to forests which no longer bel ong to them, drought and soil deterioration from overgrazing were indicated by people acting negatively on the preservation of the knowledge of plants in the younger generations.