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Tanvir HossainEthnobotanist

Fieldwork in progress · Tangail, Jamalpur, Netrokona

Nine leaves, and what
they are actually for.

I record what rural Bangladesh already knows about its own plants, before the person who knows it stops being asked. Nine species here, with the part used, the preparation, and what the evidence does and does not yet support.

Department of Botany, Padma University, Savar

Gallery

Nine species from the working herbarium.

Neem
নিম · Azadirachta indica

Azadirachta indicaMeliaceae

Neem

Part used
Leaf, bark, seed oil
Status
Widely planted

The one everybody can name. Leaves boiled for skin complaints and chickenpox, the bitter twig used as a datun, the pressed seed oil kept for scabies and lice.

Field note. The best-recorded species in the set and the least interesting for that reason. Azadirachtin is well characterised; our contribution is the seasonal variation in leaf yield across the three districts, which is larger than the literature assumes.

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Method

Four rules, and the first one is the whole discipline.

  1. 01

    Ask first

    Nothing is collected before somebody has been asked what it is for. The use is the data; the plant is only the voucher for it.

  2. 02

    Collect properly

    Flowering or fruiting material, pressed the same day, with GPS, habitat, and the name of the person who identified it.

  3. 03

    Deposit it

    Every record has a numbered voucher in the herbarium. A claim with no specimen behind it cannot be checked and so is not a record.

  4. 04

    Give it back

    Findings go to the communities they came from in Bangla, on paper, before they go anywhere in English behind a paywall.

1,204vouchersdeposited since 2014
312specieswith a recorded use
47villagesacross three districts
9PhD studentssupervised to completion

Selected papers

Five of thirty-one.

  • 2026

    Harvest timing and andrographolide yield in cultivated Andrographis paniculata

    Journal of Ethnopharmacology · First author

  • 2025

    Bark harvesting intensity and stem survival in Terminalia arjuna, Tangail district

    Economic Botany · First author

  • 2024

    Homestead medicinal flora of three char villages: an inventory

    Bangladesh Journal of Plant Taxonomy · With R. Sultana

  • 2023

    Who is asked? Gendered knowledge of plant use in rural Bangladesh

    Journal of Ethnobiology · First author

  • 2021

    Seasonal variation in leaf yield of Azadirachta indica across three agro-ecological zones

    Plant Science Today · With M. A. Islam

Contact

Room 402, Science Building, Padma University, Savar, Dhaka 1342

I supervise two new research students a year and read every proposal that arrives, though not always quickly. Collecting enquiries from other herbaria are welcome.