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Beyond Scientific Names: Yorùbá Plant Naming, Àṣẹ and the Forgotten System of Classifying Nature By Olori Asabi Ifaniwura What if plants were never simply leaves, roots, stems and flowers? What if the names our ancestors gave them were actually carrying an entire system of knowledge about their nature, qualities, functions and relationship with the world? One of the greatest challenges facing indigenous African knowledge today is not necessarily the absence of knowledge, but the gradual loss of the frameworks through which that knowledge was understood, organised, transmitted and preserved. For generations, Yorùbá communities developed sophisticated ways of observing, naming, identifying and classifying plants. These practices were not random acts of naming. They emerged from generations of interaction with the environment, careful observation, experimentation, oral transmission and cultural interpretation. Yet, as Western educational frameworks became dominant, many indigenous ways of understanding the natural world were pushed to the margins. What was once taught through language, observation, apprenticeship, storytelling, Ifá knowledge and traditional practice increasingly became something that was either overlooked or considered inferior to formally recognised scientific knowledge. This raises an important question: If we can learn to understand nature through Western scientific classification, why should we not also learn to understand nature through our own indigenous systems of knowledge? Continue reading on Ewé app ewe.com.ng/articles/beyond-s…