Companion plants: Ethnobotany of smudge and smudge stick makers in the river basin of Paraná (Santa Fe, Argentina)

Abstract

Background and aims: The practice of smudging is an activity that remains present and current in various indigenous, peasant and urban contexts in Latin America. The study is approached from an urban botany developed by women, the smudge stick makers, who gather, dry, weave and intend the plant bodies. We explore the uses and significant of the plants that make up the smudge in the river basin of Paraná.
M&M: Through ethnography tools, we conducted interviews with seven women (between 23 and 42 years of age), smudge stick makers who make, use and market
bundles of plants. We established the geographic origin of the species, acquisition ways and gathering areas of the plants.
Results: A total of 58 species were recorded, of which 30 were native. Gathering is the most common acquisition way (93%). It is in the gathering, the identification and in the transit where plants and smudge stick makers converge, forming relationalities. In this way physiological, affective and emotional bonds are established accompanying the experiences of the smudge stick makers.
Conclusions: The ethnobotany of smudge stick makers takes us to the limits, where the urban and the rural, the city dweller and the peasant, the human and the
non-human converge. The companion plants defy the materiality of the utilitarian, smudge is finally defined as a relation, a meeting between existing with the ability to
affect and even ‘accompany’ each other.