Stories told by plants on graveyards in Northern Angola.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Worldwide, different traditions of symbolic statements in graveyards can be found. However, studies on sub-Saharan Africa are rare. For BaKongo cemeteries, it is only known that they traditionally do not exhibit plants for decoration purposes. Our study wanted to inspect the influence of Portuguese culture due to the long shared colonial past. METHODS:During 2015 and 2019, plant use in 87 graveyards in 13 municipalities of the province Uíge was documented. Five expert interviews with the village eldest in five municipalities completed the data collection. RESULTS:While 24% of the graveyards didn´t have any planting, 27 plant species were found in the remaining ones, including a high percentage of alien species (59%), mainly from the Americas. The most abundant plant species are

SUBMITTER: Lautenschlager T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7430708 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature