Dataset Information

Medicinal and useful plants in the tradition of Rotonda, Pollino National Park, Southern Italy.

ABSTRACT:

Background

This paper reports an ethnobotanical survey of the traditional uses of medicinal and useful plants in an area of the Pollino National Park, Basilicata, Southern Italy. The study, conducted between 2009 and 2010, gathered information on the medicinal plants traditionally used in the neighbourhood of town of Rotonda, in the Pollino National Park, that appears have very rich and interesting ethnopharmacological traditions.

Methods

In all, we interviewed 120 key informants, whose age ranged between 50 and 95 years.

Results

The research resulted to the identification of 78 medicinal plants belonging to 46 families. Among the species reported, 59 are used in human medicine, 18 for domestic use, 8 in veterinary medicine. Several plants have been reported in previous studies, but with different uses, or never reported.

Conclusions

Data obtained showed that in the studied area the folk use of plants is alive and still derives from daily practice.

SUBMITTER: Di Sanzo P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3621777 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Medicinal and useful plants in the tradition of Rotonda, Pollino National Park, Southern Italy.

Di Sanzo Paola P De Martino Laura L Mancini Emilia E Feo Vincenzo De VD

Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine 20130323

<h4>Background</h4>This paper reports an ethnobotanical survey of the traditional uses of medicinal and useful plants in an area of the Pollino National Park, Basilicata, Southern Italy. The study, conducted between 2009 and 2010, gathered information on the medicinal plants traditionally used in the neighbourhood of town of Rotonda, in the Pollino National Park, that appears have very rich and interesting ethnopharmacological traditions.<h4>Methods</h4>In all, we interviewed 120 key informants, ...[more]

PMID: 23522331

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND: Medicinal plant trade is important for local livelihoods. However, many medicinal plants are difficult to identify when they are sold as roots, powders or bark. DNA barcoding involves using a short, agreed-upon region of a genome as a unique identifier for species- ideally, as a global standard. RESEARCH QUESTION: What is the functionality, efficacy and accuracy of the use of barcoding for identifying root material, using medicinal plant roots sold by herbalists in Marrakech, Morocco, as a test dataset. METHODOLOGY: In total, 111 root samples were sequenced for four proposed barcode regions rpoC1, psbA-trnH, matK and ITS. Sequences were searched against a tailored reference database of Moroccan medicinal plants and their closest relatives using BLAST and Blastclust, and through inference of RAxML phylograms of the aligned market and reference samples. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Sequencing success was high for rpoC1, psbA-trnH, and ITS, but low for matK. Searches using rpoC1 alone resulted in a number of ambiguous identifications, indicating insufficient DNA variation for accurate species-level identification. Combining rpoC1, psbA-trnH and ITS allowed the majority of the market samples to be identified to genus level. For a minority of the market samples, the barcoding identification differed significantly from previous hypotheses based on the vernacular names. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Endemic plant species are commercialized in Marrakech. Adulteration is common and this may indicate that the products are becoming locally endangered. Nevertheless the majority of the traded roots belong to species that are common and not known to be endangered. A significant conclusion from our results is that unknown samples are more difficult to identify than earlier suggested, especially if the reference sequences were obtained from different populations. A global barcoding database should therefore contain sequences from different populations of the same species to assure the reference sequences characterize the species throughout its distributional range.

Dataset Information

Medicinal and useful plants in the tradition of Rotonda, Pollino National Park, Southern Italy.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Medicinal and useful plants in the tradition of Rotonda, Pollino National Park, Southern Italy.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets