Cross-cultural and historical traceability of ethnomedicinal Asteraceae. Eastern Morocco and Eastern Andalusia: Two sides of a sea in 20 centuries of history

Abstract

The aim of the study is to analyse the sharing and dissimilarities of current popular knowledge on the medicinal uses of plants in two neighbouring areas of the Western Mediterranean with a shared historical background: Eastern Morocco and Eastern Andalusia (Spain), focusing on the most important botanical family in both territories, the Asteraceae. Data on the Moroccan traditional use of the plants were gathered in an ethnobotanical field research. For comparison, a database was developed containing these data and those from the reviews of the ethnobotanical literature from Eastern Andalusia, and three historical important herbals. Statistical analysis was performed using clustering hierarchical analysis and Jaccard´s similarity index. Results show that in Morocco, 10 taxa of the family are used to treat 45 medical conditions of 10 pathological groups. The whole database reached 380 use records to treat 64 conditions across time and both cultures. The consensus of current ethnobotanical knowledge in the two studied territories is high, as 35.5% of uses are practised in both territories. Among coincident uses in the 5 information sources, most are currently accepted-approved through phytotherapeutical and ethnopharmacological studies. Nearly 70% of the uses included in Ibn al-Baytar´s codex are of previous unknown origin. The high coincidence in the current use in both territories seems to be influenced by: 1. the shared historical context and medical traditions for several centuries and 2. the validity and pharmacological effectiveness of the plants: well ethnopharmacologicaly studied uses are transmitted both through time and territories or cultures.