The Role of Botanical Families in Medicinal Ethnobotany: A Phylogenetic Perspective.

Joan Vallès,Montse Parada,Teresa Garnatje,Airy Gras,Ugo D’Ambrosio,Oriane Hidalgo

doi:10.3390/plants10010163

Abstract

Studies suggesting that medicinal plants are not chosen at random are becoming more common. The goal of this work is to shed light on the role of botanical families in ethnobotany, depicting in a molecular phylogenetic frame the relationships between families and medicinal uses of vascular plants in several Catalan-speaking territories. The simple quantitative analyses for ailments categories and the construction of families and disorders matrix were carried out in this study. A Bayesian approach was used to estimate the over- and underused families in the medicinal flora. Phylogenetically informed analyses were carried out to identify lineages in which there is an overrepresentation of families in a given category of use, i.e., hot nodes. The ethnobotanicity index, at a specific level, was calculated and also adapted to the family level. Two diversity indices to measure the richness of reported taxa within each family were calculated. A total of 47,630 use reports were analysed. These uses are grouped in 120 botanical families. The ethnobotanicity index for this area is 14.44% and the ethnobotanicity index at the family level is 68.21%. The most-reported families are Lamiaceae and Asteraceae and the most reported troubles are disorders of the digestive and nutritional system. Based on the meta-analytic results, indicating hot nodes of useful plants at the phylogenetic level, specific ethnopharmacological research may be suggested, including a phytochemical approach of particularly interesting taxa.

Highlights

Ethnobotany is a relatively recent denomination for a discipline that studies plant names, uses and management by human societies from ancient to current times, aiming at their projection to the future [1]
For the areas under consideration, we analysed a total of 47,630 use reports corresponding to medicinal uses of vascular plants in human medicine registered in our database, including data from ethnobotanical research performed from 1991 until today, in order to study different aspects related to the botanical families to which these uses belong, and the disorders they refer to
We can state that the medical ethnobotany of the Catalan-speaking territories scrutinised is distributed in 120 botanical families of vascular plants

Summary

Introduction

Ethnobotany is a relatively recent denomination for a discipline that studies plant names, uses and management by human societies from ancient to current times, aiming at their projection to the future [1]. Even if a precedent of this term, botanical ethnography, was coined to name the investigation of any plant materials in archaeology in order to unveil their uses and symbolisms [2], Harshberger [1] himself emphasised the fact that ethnobotanical findings should constitute an inventory of old knowledge, but should be relevant for current productive activities From those dates to the present times, ethnobotany undertook methodological innovations, but maintained the double approach of recording and preserving the ancient uses of plants by people—which contributes to describing human lifestyles—and aiming to improve human life conditions [3]. In agreement with this, medical or pharmaceutical ethnobotany, the botanical side of ethnopharmacology, is one of the main pillars of the discipline, in industrialised countries [7,8]

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