An ethnobotanical meta-analysis of North American medicinal Asteraceae

Alexandra Kachura,Cory S Harris

doi:10.1139/cjb-2021-0079

Abstract

The Asteraceae is the largest family of plants in North America and is widely used as medicine by Indigenous peoples. This study investigated the medicinal ethnobotany of North American Asteraceae to identify taxa that appear preferentially selected or avoided for general and specific medicinal uses. Asteraceae-specific ethnobotanical reports recorded in the Native American Ethnobotany database were compiled and, using residual and binomial analyses, 14 tribes were compared and ranked as either over- or under-selected for medicine, food, or technology, and for different categories of medicinal applications. Statistical analysis supported the hypothesis that the selection of species for ethnobotanical purposes is non-random and does not depend on the size of the flora. The Anthemideae tribe was identified as over-selected for all types of applications, including most therapeutic categories, most significantly as pulmonary and orthopedic aids. Subsequent analysis revealed that the over-representation of this tribe was attributed mainly to Achillea millefolium L. and Artemisia spp. The significance of Anthemideae, particularly of Achillea and Artemisia species as highly selected medicinal taxa, emphasizes their cultural importance to Indigenous North Americans. Residual and binomial statistics generally provided parallel results, but supplementary statistical methods, further in-depth investigation of other use categories, and inclusion of plant distribution data may provide greater insight into traditional uses of Asteraceae in North America.

Highlights

The Asteraceae (Compositae) is the largest family of flowering plants in North America
Motivated by the ethnobotanical significance of this plant family, the current study evaluated the medicinal applications of North American Asteraceae and assessed their prevalence of use in traditional practices
A general analysis of reported ethnobotanical uses of Asteraceae by North American Indigenous nations was completed, evaluating the total number of species within each tribe relative to the number of species used for medicine, food, or technology

Summary

Introduction

The Asteraceae (Compositae) is the largest family of flowering plants in North America. Supporting the hypothesis that selection is not random, certain families were found to contain greater or fewer medicinal species than expected based on family size (i.e., the number of species in North America as reported by Shetler and Skog (1978)). These data were ranked by their corresponding residual values, where a large positive or negative residual, respectively, represented a family favoured or avoided and (or) ignored for medicinal use. This result was consistent across cultures from well-separated geographical regions (Moerman et al 1999; Leonti et al 2003; Molares and Ladio 2009; Saslis-Lagoudakis et al 2011; Phumthum et al 2019)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion