Historical Trends in the Ethnomedicinal and Ritual Uses of Mushrooms in the Buganda Kingdom, Uganda

This study examines the historical and cultural significance of mushrooms within the ethnomedicinal practices of the Baganda of central Uganda, situating these practices within broader frameworks of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), heritage studies, and the history of medicine in Africa. While mushrooms have long been valued in Buganda as sources of food, medicine, and spiritual meaning, their ethnomedicinal applications and historical evolution remain under-documented in formal scholarship. Drawing on qualitative methods—including interviews with traditional healers, elders, and market vendors; focus group discussions; participant observation; and a review of ethnobotanical and historical literature—the study identifies mushroom species traditionally used in Buganda and analyzes their medicinal, ritual, and symbolic functions. Historically, mushroom-based healing practices are shown to be embedded in oral traditions, spiritual cosmologies, and communal health systems that predate colonial biomedical interventions. The study further explores how knowledge about mushrooms has been transmitted intergenerationally and how socio-cultural, environmental, and economic factors have shaped their continued use in the contemporary period. By framing ethnomedicinal mushroom use as both a form of intangible cultural heritage and a component of indigenous medical systems, the findings contribute to debates on heritage preservation, decolonizing medical history, and the integration of indigenous therapeutic knowledge into modern healthcare and conservation strategies.