And yet sensory experience and phytochemistry have been overlooked in much multispecies discourse. Humanplant relations are intrinsically sensory, and are often mediated through chemosensation. Our ethnographic findings suggest new avenues of analysis into the semiotics, pragmatics and metaphysics of human-plant engagements – in line with what Shepard (2004) has dubbed ‘sensory ecology’. We are interested in the complex ways people think about, and think with, plant life. Anthropological methods are of course fundamental to this enterprise, and yet, as we have shown, phytochemical, ecological and even atmospheric studies sometimes provide unexpected avenues of insight into the deeper cultural meanings of plants for indigenous people. A significant part of the cultural knowledge and daily activity of tropical forest peoples revolves around the observation, recognition, preparation and use of wild and cultivated plants, a corpus of knowledge often underappreciated by mainstream anthropologists. If we are to take indigenous knowledge seriously, we must consider a broader range of insights across the socioecological repertoire, not just the ones that appeal most directly to our particular discipline. Such a two-way dialogue will be especially important in collaborative research arrangements between indigenous peoples, scientists and anthropologists in different parts of Amazonia.