Last weekend, scientists attending the International Botanical Congress in Madrid (#IBC2024) took the landmark step to eliminate the botanical (scientific) names of certain plants deemed racially offensive. Voting on these changes was conducted by taxonomists who specialize in the scientific naming of plants.

As a result of this vote, all scientific names of plant, fungi, and algae that contain the word "caffra," which originates from insults made against Black people, will be replaced by "affra" to denote their African origins. More than 200 species will be affected. The botanists also agreed to create a special committee to rule on names given to newly described plants, fungi, and algae if they are deemed derogatory to a group or race.

Dr. Ina Vandebroek who observed the voting believes that changing these offensive names is a good start, but she hopes it will not take many years to submit and approve new proposals for other problematic names. The current voting only considers new names submitted after January 2026 to be up for scrutiny.

Dr. Vandebroek, whose research interests include decolonizing ethnobotanical research, co-organized a two-day symposium on this topic at the conference, together with graduate students Jimena Mateo Martin and Julia Gonzalez de Aledo from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. The symposium drew a full room for two days and featured speakers who engaged in topics such as working in service of Indigenous and local community rights, ethics of biocultural collections and academic publishing, offensive common plant names, social action research, gender bias in research, and the importance of small in-country herbaria in the Global South for accurate plant species conservation assessments. Dr. Vandebroek also presented on "Co-authorship with Indigenous, Afrodescendant, and Local Peoples: Opportunities and Responsibilities of Academia," encouraging the audience to reflect on valuing the multiple ways of knowing by other cultures that are often sidelined in biology research.

Although botanists have voted to change some offensive scientific names, Dr. Vandebroek emphasizes that much work remains to be done, including addressing several offensive common plant names used colloquially in everyday language. For example, the plant Dieffenbachia seguine, which is native to the Caribbean, is widely referred to as "dumb cane." This common name is linked to the plant's toxic properties, which enslavers in the Caribbean exploited to punish enslaved Africans. The continued use of this name is insensitive to the suffering and enslavement of Black people and underscores the importance of critically re-evaluating and updating plant names to reflect respect and cultural sensitivity.

To learn more about Dr. Vandebroek’s research, visit the home pages of the Natural Products Institute, part of the Caribbean Centre for Research in Bioscience.

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