Medicinal Plant Knowledge Richness and Sharing in Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

Determining how knowledge of medicinal plants is distributed in a community has been a challenge in the field of ethnobotany in recent years. Comparing the richness of knowledge and levels of sharing of such information is required in order to understand the patterns of knowledge and use of medicinal plants in traditional communities. This study evaluates the richness and level of knowledge sharing of medicinal plants among the inhabitants of a rural community in the Caatinga region of Pernambuco, Brazil. Knowledge richness and sharing was measured by the knowledge richness index (KRI) and the knowledge sharing index (KSI), which are simple tools to assess the distribution of local knowledge. We found that the community sustains a pharmacopoeia rich in medicinal plants, but that this plant knowledge is not uniformly distributed among community members. Based on the calculated indices, a significant relationship between the richness of knowledge, gender, and age of informants was not discovered. However, occupation was an important factor in the knowledge of medicinal plants, as residents with jobs related to land use had a greater knowledge in this area. The study also indicated that the formation of experts in the community, based on either knowledge of a large number of plants or of exclusive knowledge of particular plants, did not have a direct relationship with age or gender.