This paper explores the importance of elements of the natural world, and particularly plants, among people of different religious affiliations in western Africa. Plants play an overriding role in African folk religions, which in turn are closely associated with health practices and influence management decisions concerning natural resources. In spite of the extensive literature documenting ritual plant use, the cultural importance of plants in this context has not been systematically assessed. Our objective was to see whether the importance of plants was reflected in people's conceptions of global (i.e., Christianity, Islam) and folk religions (i.e., Vodoun and Bwiti) in Benin (West Africa) and Gabon (Central Africa). By performing a cultural domain analysis (CDA) with 96 individuals, we found that, regardless of the religious affiliation of informants, plants and other elements of the natural world were more present in people's notions of folk religions than in global religions. We conclude by reflecting on the potentials and limitations of the data presented here as a starting point to explore the topic of cultural keystone species.

中文翻译：

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西非宗教中植物的文化重要性。

本文探讨了在西非不同宗教背景的人们中，自然世界的要素，尤其是植物的重要性。植物在非洲民间宗教中起着至关重要的作用，而非洲民间宗教又与健康习俗密切相关并影响有关自然资源的管理决策。尽管有大量文献记载了仪式性植物的使用，但在此背景下植物的文化重要性尚未得到系统的评估。我们的目标是观察植物的重要性是否在贝宁（西非）和加蓬（中非）的人们的全球观念（即基督教，伊斯兰教）和民间宗教（即Vodoun和Bwiti）中得到反映。通过对96个人进行文化领域分析（CDA），我们发现，不管线人的宗教信仰是什么，自然世界中的植物和其他元素在人们的民间宗教概念中所占的比例要高于全球宗教。最后，我们通过反思此处提供的数据的潜力和局限性，以此作为探索文化重点石种的起点。