[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

forest’ which covers the steep slopes of the real wall which closes the Suowi Valley,
between 2,500 and 2,800 m altitude.

In order to carry out this inventory, three herbaria were compiled with the help of
Ankave informants, in 1987-88 (220 specimens), 1990 (75 specimens) and 1993 (151
specimens). The number of plants identified is 294. Botanical identifications were made
by botanists from the Herbarium of Lae, Papua New Guinea (Forest Research Institute,
Botany branch) and, for part of the 1993 herbarium, by the Department of Agronomy of
ORSTOM in Port-Vila (Vanuatu). Some plants were collected several times in order to
check a previously made identification. From one herbarium to another, informants
sometimes disagree on the name of a plant and, above all, the specimens are presented in
a form or in a state of conservation that is more or less favourable to identification down
to species level. In particular, while it is always possible to obtain a sample of a plant’s
foliage, it is difficult to collect its flower and fruit at the same time, when these are
difficult to access (1.e. located at such a height that it is dangerous to cut them) or, more
frequently, in the case where the species is seasonal and is not flowering or fruiting at the
time the samples are collected.

Such a study is a largely collective undertaking. Here the ethnologist is only a project
manager who entrusts to others, more qualified, the task of associating local or scientific
knowledge with a certain number of plants. I would therefore like to thank Karl Kerenga,
Joe Wiakabu and Max Kuduk of the Lae Herbarium, as well as Chanel Sam (ORSTOM,
Port-Vila, Vanuatu) for the identifications they kindly made from samples that often bore
the traces of their long travels between the banks of the Suowi and the scientific
departments concerned. At the PNG Institute of Medical Research in Goroka, the patience
of Ray Spark and then Gideon Philip was regularly tested, both during the shipment of
samples and in relaying my communications with the Lae Herbarium after my return.

In France, Jacques Barrau provided me with the information I needed to write an article
on Pangium edule and Jean-Marie Bompard, a botanist specialising in South-East Asia,
taught me some of the rudiments of his discipline, which were necessary for my
investigations. I would like to thank both of them.

But, above all, this work would have been totally impossible without the passion of
the Ankave themselves for their plants. Those who spoke afternoon after afternoon about
the leaves I was labelling are too numerous to mention individually. I will only express
my gratitude to Idzad3e Maad3e Akwiïje (William) who between 1987 and 1993, in all
weathers, undertook sometimes vertiginous climbs to reach a stubborn fruit or flower. He
took this joint work very seriously and with great pleasure. William is without doubt the
most knowledgeable botanist of the Suowi Valley.

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