简要介绍民族植物学的性质、研究现况及其在经济、生态、环境和学术上的应用情况。民族植物学的社会价值通过其在增强民族自信心、伦理学和知识产权等方面的作用得以论证。民族植物学的文化价值具体而生动，体现于种种直接的植物文化现象（如植物礼仪文化、食花文化、树叶信、草药文化等）和宗教行为（如植物图腾、树神崇拜、神林崇拜等）。通过对民族植物学的经济、生态价值和社会、文化价值的分析，作者相信，民族植物学对于文化多样性和生物多样性的保护将起到积极的作用。

The nature and research status of ethnobotany , and its economical, ecological,environmental and scientific functions are briefly introduced in the present paper. A tentative research on the social and cultural values of ethnobotany, which are the other aspects of values of ethnobotany, is achieved in this paper. The ethnobotanical achievement is the evidence of civilization of ethnic groups, which is helpful to improve the selfconfidence of minority nationalities. Ethics and intelligent property right of ethnobotany are treated as the social values. Kinds of culture phenomena of ethnobotany such as plant
ceremony culture, flower-eating culture, plants used for communication and herb culture are described. Plants have played important roles in religion based on their uses as totem, taboo and holy things. As a result, the authors believe that ethnobotany will be potential in the conservation of culture diversity and biodiversity.