A REVIEW ON SOME MEDICINAL PLANT SPECIES WITH THE MOST TRADITIONAL MEDICINAL USAGE IN INDIA

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been used since the Vedic era. In rural India, around 80 percent of the population more or less uses the traditional type of medicines. There are about 45,000 medicinal plant species in India, with concentrated spots in the region of Eastern Himalayas, Western Ghats and Andaman and Nicobar Island. The officially documented plants with medicinal potential are around 3000 but traditional practitioners use more than 6000. India is the largest producer of medicinal herbs and is called the botanical garden of the world. Nowadays in developing countries, assurance of the protection, quality and usefulness of medicinal plants and herbal products has now become a key issue. Almost every portion of the plant has its own medicinal properties. Medicinal plants possess many other properties like antioxidant, antiinflammatory, anti-parasitic, anti-hemolytic, antibiotic, anti-insecticidal properties etc. These are widely used by tribal people all over the world. There is a long list of medicinal plant species which are helpful for mankind in many ways but the author tried to focus on explaining the traditional medicinal usage of 32 plant species in this review article.