Medicina Tradicional y Naturopatía Clínica

Abstracto

Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plant and Traditional Knowledge Used

Bekele Kindie, Solomon Mengistu

As the review conducting ethnobotany deals with the link amongst people, livestock, and the environment with plants and gives details how people of a particular culture and religious knowledge formulate use of medicinal plants. Indigenous knowledge is the accumulation of procedural knowledge, cultural practice and traditional knowledge as a result of many years. The term Ethnobotany was declared orally by John Hershberger in 1895. Medicinal Plants have been used as a vital source of preventive and healing to human and livestock ailment. Thus traditional medicine is the knowledge and practices of a particular community which used plants to diagnose and heal health problems of livestock and humans. Medicinal plants used in Ethiopia constituted 887 of plant species and 26 species are indigenous. The most effective plant species are identified and recorded to treat different humans and animal ailments. In Ethiopia 90% of the livestock population depends on medicinal plants for primary health care. Ethnoveterinary medicine is a traditional knowledge and practice to prevent and treat diseases encountered by livestock. In Ethiopia medicinal plant species are not equivalently distributed in each part of the country. In-situ conservation is a method of conserving and protecting medicinal plant species in their natural habitat. Whereas Ex-situ conservation is a method of conserving and protecting medicinal plant species without their natural habitats. However medicinal plants and traditional knowledge are declining at an alarming rate due to ecological shifts, deforestation, urbanization, loss of forests and woodlands, urbanization and agricultural expansion.