Steve Bunk | Jul 9, 2000 | 7 min read
Photo courtesy of David G. Kingston From left, Kim Wright; a tribal healer (name unknown); and Frits Van Troon, a Suriname ethnobotanist, examine a medicinal plant. In his new book, Medicine Quest,1 ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin describes a plant that forest dwellers in Suriname, on the northern coast of South America, call nekoe. They crush its stems and sprinkle them on streams to stun fish. The local Maroons, who are descendants of 17th century slaves of the Dutch, claim that tapirs eat neko