University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore

Enthnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make of use of indigenous plants. Ethnobotanists explore how plants are used for such things as food, shelter, medicine, clothing, hunting, and religious ceremonies. Ethnobotanists are usually botanists and/or biologists with additional training in such areas as archeology, chemistry, ecology, anthropology. Linguistics, history, pharmacology, sociology, religion and mythology. With such broad training. Ethnobotanists raise many interesting questions quite different in scope from those of previous generations of scientists trained in botany alone. This wide-ranging vision is reflected in the cutting-edge research contained in this book's chapters.

The Mlabri are an enigmatic group of about 300 people who nowadays range across the Nan, Phrae, and Phayao provinces of north and northeastern Thailand and the Sayaburi province of western Laos [1,2]. Their traditional lifestyle is to more frequently through the dense forests of the high mountains, building temporary structures of bamboo sticks thatched with banana leaves, which they occupy for a few days, until the leaves turn yellow (thus accounting for their traditional Thai name, Phi Tong Luang, which means " spirit of the yellow leaves"). First contacted by Europeans ion 1936 [3], they are unique among the hill tribes of northern Thailand in that, until recently, they subsisted by hunting and gathering combined with occasional barter trade with villagers.