Documenting Ethnomedicinal Knowledge of Wild Plants

Ethnomedicinal use data of wild medicinal plants was gathered from the local informants using structured and semi-structured interview methodology with documentation of the information in questionnaire form during year-2019 (Fig 2). About 200 informants comprising of both male (120) and female (80) were involved in the study and during all trips one male and one female guide or translator was accompanied because rural and mountainous people use different languages and dialects, hence it was very important to use indigenous translator to know the real knowledge about indigenous flora from the native communities [49 –52 ]. The interviewees were farmers, house-women, midwives, herbalist and traditional phytotherapist (TPT) while it has been seen that most of the people were illiterate or had very basic education and only few had graduation level literacy; thus extracting diverse and maximum knowledge of TEMs from the indigenous communities. In the research trips not only traditional knowledge of TEMs was documented but also plant specimens were collected with guidance of local people describing their native names and tonic preparation methods were narrated in field notebook. For this study, interviewees were selected gender free manner and each collected plant was showed to “five or more” individuals and asked to tell their ethnomedicinal, ethnobotanical uses and occurrence place with population density of each species. In this procedure, if same data or information about the species was described by three or more than three persons (>60%) then it was declared “authentic” and included in the study for better reliability and further research analysis. However, the less information collected about certain plants does not mean that they are of less significance in TEMs, that might be due to reason that traditional ethnomedicinal knowledge (TEK) about wild plants is gradually disappearing in younger generations or population of the plants is becoming scarce day by day due to various threatening factors [53 (link), 54 (link)]. For proper authentication of the ethnomedicinal data, the botanical and local names with family of each plant were verified manually with herbarium specimens, taxonomic literature (hard and soft form), manuals, Flora of Pakistan and cross checked with online data from the plant list website or flora of Pakistan & litrature [55 –59 (link)]. All collected plants were brought under standardized voucher numbering system with labels and cross-referenced with field notebook (FNB) record to further validate their authenticity [60 (link)–62 (link)]. All gathered ethnomedicinal data of plants was presented in alphabetical order comprising of botanical names, common names, family, plant parts, preparation mode, administration method, diseases cured and other ethnobotanical uses promulgated in the study area. During the field surveys, plants specimens were collected properly (having flowers, fruit or both) and preserved according to the standard process for herbarium (MUH) [47 , 63 ]. The herbarium specimens were prepared according to protocol of previous researchers like Seshagirirao et al., (2016), Vitalini et al., (2013) and Ishtiaq et al., (2010a) [39 , 64 (link), 65 (link)] and deposited in the herbarium of the Department of Botany with proper voucher number allotment for future reference because they will assist taxonomy students and researchers to identify the required species for further collection from same and/or other areas of the study area and Azad Kashmir regions [66 (link), 67 (link)]. The collected plant specimens were properly identified using Flora of Pakistan data “www.eflora.com”, the plant list “www.theplantlist.org” and comparing with printed Flora book [68 (link), 69 (link)]. Whereas another website named “International Plant Name Index” with webpage “www.ipni.org” was used for cross checking of botanical and family names of the plants [70 (link)]. The collected plants were identified by Dr. Muhammad Ajaib; a taxonomist of the Department of Botany and all prepared herbarium vouchers bearing code “MUH-”, were kept in herbarium, Department of Botany Mirpur University of Science and Technology (MUST), Bhimber Campus, AJK, Pakistan for future reference.