The folklore of medicinal plants recorded from Leepa Valley, Azad Jammu and Kashmir

Abstract

The folklore of 43 species of 'medicinal plants' belonging to 27 families was recorded form Leepa Valley, Muzaffarabad. Out of 43 medicinal plants, 4 gymnosperms, 38 angiosperms and 01 fern species were used against different diseases. The major problems cured by 'medicinal plants' were digestive problems (24 spp), dermal system problems (13 sp), hepatic problems (11 spp) and respiratory problems (7 spp). Further, 4 species were used as spices and vegetables and six species recorded have biological activities; whereas joint problems and cardiac problems were treated by 3 species each. Most of the medicinal plants were uprooted by the inhabitants for selling or for local use. The results also indicated that among the recorded species, 44% were used as 'medicinal food plant', 23% as 'medicinal gathered food plant' and 'orally administrated medicinal plant' were 32.56%. The utility of these plants for different purposes posses a great threat to the plant resourses in the area. Huge quantities of MPs were lost every year owing to lack of proper collection, over exploitation and deforestation.

Ethnomedicinal utilization and conservation status of highland flora from Western Himalayas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan

“…In Azad Kashmir, traditional health care activities are customarily based on traditional ethnobotanical knowledge. Different qualitative studies dealing with the medicinal flora of Azad Kashmir Himalaya have been carried out by (Ahmad et al 2012;Habib et al 2013). However, a very few reports were regarding the quantitative data collection and interpretation in different aspects of ethnobotany as Informant Consensus Factor (ICF), Fidelity level (FL), Relative Frequency Citation (RFC), Plant Part Values (PPVs) and Informant agreement ratio (IAR) (Ishtiaq et al 2012;Amjad et al 2017).…”