An Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants in Kinmen.

Jung Chao,Chia-Hung Huang,Ting-Yang Chen,Yung-Chi Cheng,Chien-Yu Ko,Shyh-Shyun Huang

doi:10.3389/fphar.2021.681190

Abstract

Kinmen is an outlying island that has the richest plant resources in Taiwan. The objective of this study was to record the methods that people in Kinmen use medicinal plants and to analyze the cultural characteristics of their use. Field investigations were carried out in various towns and villages in Kinmen, and 80 respondents were included in the survey. The search for respondents was conducted through local elderly people and medicinal plant groups. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the local people to obtain their knowledge of medicinal plants and how they disseminate this information. Informed consent was obtained prior to the interviews, and the following was determined: plant use value (UV), frequency of citation (FC), and factor of informant consensus (Fic). These parameters were used to quantify the data and measure the agreement among the respondents on using plants to treat different diseases. Finally, the survey results were compared with the representative ethnobotanical literature in neighboring areas to evaluate the similarity between plant usage in Kinmen and neighboring areas as well as to determine whether there are new species or novel usages in the study area. In the Kinmen area, phytotherapy is generally used by elderly people with low educational attainments. According to the survey results, 83 medicinal plants belonging to 48 families were collected. These medicinal plants were mainly distributed in the Compositae, Lamiaceae, and Solanaceae families. Eighteen novel uses that have not been previously documented were found, four of which were related to newly recorded medicinal plant species in the Kinmen area. The results showed that 93.98 and 65.06% of the species collected in the present study were also recorded in literature from Taiwan and Fujian, respectively. This study showed that Kinmen’s ethnobotanical knowledge is closely related to the Catalogue of Medicinal Plant Resources in Taiwan, and local people indeed shared similar uses of medicinal species with people in Taiwan and Fujian (46.99%). The results from this study highlighted the importance of traditional medicine in the Kinmen area, where people have a specific understanding of using medicinal plants and communication with people in Taiwan and Fujian Province in China. It was found that Kinmen shares ethnobotanical knowledge with Taiwan and Fujian.

Highlights

Kinmen (Quemoy) is located on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, in the west-central island area of Taiwan’s main island (Chen, 2017)
Women were more familiar with the knowledge and use of medicinal plants than men were, which may be because women usually take care of their families in the traditional Southern Fujian society of Kinmen (Lu, 2014)
Other studies have shown that men occupy a dominant position in the public professional field of plants, women still have more knowledge about the use of traditional medicinal plants than men (Eddouks et al, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Kinmen (Quemoy) is located on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, in the west-central island area of Taiwan’s main island (Chen, 2017). Its correct legal name is Kinmen County, and it is under the jurisdiction of Fujian Province, the People’s Republic of China. Because of its special political situation due to geographical location, population migration, war, and cultural exchange, Kinmen has been in different positions in the past, depending on the regimes and dynasties that ruled the area. Kinmen and Taiwan are governed by the same regime at present, from a historical perspective, there is not much similarity between them (Chen, 2017). Several battles took place in Kinmen, which is why it shares a common destiny with Taiwan (Table 1) (Sung, 2009; Sung, 2016)

Objectives

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Results

Conclusion