Plantas medicinales y predictibilidad de uso en algunas veredas del corregimiento de San Cristóbal (Antioquia), Colombia

Abstract

For seven months, in company of two local informants, we made an inventory of medicinal plants grown in three villages of San Cristobal Township (Medellin, Antioquia). We found 105 plant species in 43 families. The aim was to establish if there was any relationship between the botanical family to which the plant belongs and the type of assigned medical use by the community, in order to know if it is possible to anticipate potential uses in other plant species. We performed a cluster analysis trying to show this relationship. Nine groups of plant families were established; each one associated to a particular set of medicinal use categories. We conclude that in this case, the relationship between botanical family and medicinal use category is not given one by one, but a particular plant can be used for various purposes, these being known in advance. We conclude that it is not possible to predict only one use, but a set of medicinal uses of a plant if known botanical family to which it belongs. According to the above, as in many other studies of South America highlands, for this community we reported that the most important medicinal families (by species number and citation) are always the same, including within them Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Apiaceae and Solanaceae.