Ethnobotanical Insights Into Medicinal Plants

A significant gap exists between traditional knowledge and modern scientific understanding of phytochemicals and ethnobotanical wisdom in botanical science. Despite the commonplace culinary use of many herbs and seasonings, their historical, botanical, and medicinal dimensions often remain overlooked. This gap hinders advancements in various disciplines, including chemistry, pharmacology, botany, and agriculture, limiting the potential for innovative research and sustainable solutions. Ethnobotanical Insights into Medicinal Plants bridges this gap by comprehensively examining these plants' morphology, cultivation techniques, and classifications. This book illuminates their untapped potential and catalyzes innovative healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing research. Integrating ethnobotanical observations with scientific progress enhances the intellectual domain for academics, researchers, and professionals, paving the way for environmentally sustainable methods of producing bioactive substances.

For millennia, plants and their habitats have been fundamental to the lives of Indigenous Peoples - as sources of food and nutrition, medicines, and technological materials - and central to ceremonial traditions, spiritual beliefs, narratives, and language. While the First Peoples of Canada and other parts of the world have developed deep cultural understandings of plants and their environments, this knowledge is often underrecognized in debates about land rights and title, reconciliation, treaty negotiations, and traditional territories. Plants, People, and Places argues that the time is long past due to recognize and accommodate Indigenous Peoples' relationships with plants and their ecosystems. Essays in this volume, by leading voices in philosophy, Indigenous law, and environmental sustainability, consider the critical importance of botanical and ecological knowledge to land rights and related legal and government policy, planning, and decision making in Canada, the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand. Analyzing specific cases in which Indigenous Peoples' inherent rights to the environment have been denied or restricted, this collection promotes future prosperity through more effective and just recognition of the historical use of and care for plants in Indigenous cultures. A timely book featuring Indigenous perspectives on reconciliation, environmental sustainability, and pathways toward ethnoecological restoration, Plants, People, and Places reveals how much there is to learn from the history of human relationships with nature.

This new 2-volume set aims to share and preserve ethnic and traditional knowledge of herbal medicine and treatments, while also emphasizing the link between biodiversity, human nutrition, and food security. Ethnic Knowledge and Perspectives of Medicinal Plants is divided into two volumes, with volume 1 focusing on the traditional use of curative properties and treatment strategies of medicinal plants, and volume 2 addressing the varied nutritional and dietary benefits of medicinal plants and the practice of Ayurveda. Both volumes stress the importance of bioresources for human nutrition and nutraceuticals based on ethnic knowledge and the need for efforts to protect biodiversity in many regions rich with medicinal plants. Exploring the benefits of medicinal plants in disease prevention, treatment, and management, Volume 1 discusses the traditional use of medicinal plants as promising therapeutics for cancer, liver conditions, COVID-19, and other human ailments. It examines the efficacy of Ayurvedic and Chinese herbal medicine, Indian traditional medicine, and other ethnic herbal practices used by indigenous peoples of Azerbaijan, South America, Turkey, India, etc. A variety of plants are discussed, and the ethnomedicinal applications of over 100 wild mushrooms for their medicinal and healthcare purposes are elaborated on. While volume 1 focuses primarily on natural plant resources for addressing specific health issues, volume 2 looks at traditional medicinal plant use for their nutritional and dietary benefits, while also encouraging the preservation of biodiversity for healthy and sustainable diets. The volume presents information on over 2200 vascular plant taxa from 127 families as well as many taxa from leaf parts, fruits, underground parts, floral parts, seeds, and more that have potential use as edible food plants. Ethnic knowledge on the wild edible mushrooms is an emerging area, which is unique and is dependent on the folk knowledge of tribals; this volume discusses the unique nutritional attributes of wild edible mushrooms (206 species belonging to 73 genera) in Southern India. The authors look at various lichens as nutritional aids and medicine and as flavoring agents and spices. Fucoidans derived from the seaweeds (and spirulina) are described for their antioxidant activity, nutritional and anti-aging properties, antiviral activities, anti-cancer properties, anti-diabetic properties, and more. The authors also examine how ethnicity affects healthcare/nutritive systems at different levels through various dynamics such as lower income, inability for services uptake, disputes among different ethnic groups, cultural attitudes (some ethnic group are vegetarian), lack of socio-economic resources, and disease prevalence. Together, these two important volumes aim to preserve and disseminate the valuable ethnic knowledge of medicinal plants gained over thousands of years and to promote the value of integrating and safeguarding biodiversity.

A significant gap exists between traditional knowledge and modern scientific understanding of phytochemicals and ethnobotanical wisdom in botanical science. Despite the commonplace culinary use of many herbs and seasonings, their historical, botanical, and medicinal dimensions often remain overlooked. This gap hinders advancements in various disciplines, including chemistry, pharmacology, botany, and agriculture, limiting the potential for innovative research and sustainable solutions. Ethnobotanical Insights into Medicinal Plants bridges this gap by comprehensively examining these plants' morphology, cultivation techniques, and classifications. This book illuminates their untapped potential and catalyzes innovative healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing research. Integrating ethnobotanical observations with scientific progress enhances the intellectual domain for academics, researchers, and professionals, paving the way for environmentally sustainable methods of producing bioactive substances.

Ethnobotany includes the traditional use of plants in different fields like medicine and agriculture. This book incorporates important studies based on ethnobotany of different geographic zones. The book covers medicinaland aromatic plants, ethnopharmacology, bioactive molecules, plants used in cancer, hypertension, disorders of the central nervous system, and also as antipsoriatic, antibacterial, antioxidant, antiurolithiatic. The book will be useful for a diverse group of readers including plant scientists, pharmacologists, clinicians, herbalists, natural therapy experts, chemists, microbiologists, NGOs and those who are interested in traditional therapies.

This volume addresses recent and ongoing ethnobotanical studies in the Balkans. The book focuses on elaborating the relevance of such studies for future initiatives in this region, both in terms of sustainable and peaceful (trans-regional, trans-cultural) rural development. A multi-disciplinary viewpoint is utilized, with an incorporation of historical, ethnographic, linguistic, biological, nutritional and medical perspectives. The book is also authored by recognized scholars, who in the last decade have extensively researched the Balkan traditional knowledge systems as they pertain to perceptions of the natural world and especially plants. Ethnobotany and Biocultural Diversities in the Balkans is the first ethnobotany book on one of the most biologically and culturally diverse regions of the world and is a valuable resource for both scholars and students interested in the field of ethnobotany.

Plants have cultural histories, as their applications change over time and with place. Some plant species have affected human cultures in profound ways, such as the stimulants tea and coffee from the Old World, or coca and quinine from South America. Even though medicinal plants have always attracted considerable attention, there is surprisingly little research on the interface of ethnobotany and medical anthropology. This volume, which brings together (ethno-)botanists, medical anthropologists and a clinician, makes an important contribution towards filling this gap. It emphasises that plant knowledge arises situationally as an intrinsic part of social relationships, that herbs need to be enticed if not seduced by the healers who work with them, that herbal remedies are cultural artefacts, and that bioprospecting and medicinal plant discovery can be viewed as the epitome of a long history of borrowing, stealing and exchanging plants.

The book “Floral Diversity of Kachchh Arid Ecosystem: A Unique Insight into Xeric Plants” focuses on biodiversity, ecology and taxonomy of plant diversity of altitudinal hill gradient environment viz. Kachchh Arid Ecosystem, Western Gujarat, India, with special emphasis on checklist of some rare, endangered and threatened plants. It encompasses the in-depth information on occurrence and distribution of general vegetation, species richness, frequency, density, abundance, commonness, and rarity of important and significant plant species exist in the region. The core theme of this book is floristic study and altitudinal diversity of hilly plants with special reference to species distribution, population dynamics, and community structure in addition to ethnobotany, ethnomedicine and phytosociology. The book embodies the vast and enormous information about ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal plants used by tribal community of hilly habitats of Kachchh. This book also highlights the phytosociological aspects of grass species along with historical account, population structure, dominance, and dynamics. It summarizes the unique records of some noteworthy plants in relation to status, distribution, age structure, threats faced, etc. Besides, the book is a good repository of field records of some native and endemic plants used by locales as medications or panacea for curing incorrigible ailments. The special feature of this book is field monitoring, assessment and evaluation of native plants using grass-root techniques for survival, sustenance, revival, restoration, and rejuvenation of dwindling plant species of environmental, ecological, and economic importance of arid hill ecosystem.