Ethnobotanical Study of Traditional Medicinal Plants in Debark District, North Gondar, Ethiopia

Asmera Amde¹ , Getinet Masresha² , Hamer Hansha³ , Obsa Asafa⁴

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.6 , Issue.11 , pp.16-23, Nov-2020

Online published on Nov 30, 2020

Copyright © Asmera Amde, Getinet Masresha, Hamer Hansha, Obsa Asafa . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
An Ethnobotanical study on the medicinal plant was carried out from October to May 2017 in Debark District, North Gondar, Ethiopia. The objective of the study was to compile and document medicinally important plants in the study area. A total of 62 informants (45 males and 17 females) between the ages of 22 and 70 were selected from ten sampled Kebeles with purposive (key informants) and random sampling (general informants) techniques. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, field observations and group discussions. The collected data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and detailed ethnobotanical analytical tools including informant consensus factor (ICF), Fidelity level (FL) and Jaccard’s Coefficient of Similarity (JCS). A total of 93 plant species were collected and identified, 60 species from the wild vegetation, 27 species from home-gardens and 6 from both (wild vegetation and homegardens) that distributed in 86 genera and 51 families. From these, 50 species were recorded for the treatment of human health problems, 3 species for livestock and 40 species for the treatment of both human and livestock diseases. Herbs were found the highest plant life forms. The most frequently used plant parts were leaves (33.33%) followed by roots (15.48%). The most widely used method of preparation was crushing (20%) followed by pounding and mixing (18.40 %). Oral use was the commonest (56.67%) administration route followed by dermal use (29.63%). The most commonly used application of medicinal plant was drinking (37.57%) followed by creaming (16.76 %). Agricultural expansion, firewood collection, construction, timber, forage and charcoal preparation were reported as major threats to plants of the study area. In order to protect medicinal plants destruction and loss of indigenous knowledge, local communities could be involved in conservation and management of plant resources and their indigenous knowledge is paramount.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Debark District, Indigenous Knowledge, Medicinal Plants, Traditional Healers

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