AN ETHNOMEDICINAL STUDY OF SOME WILD PLANTS GROWING NEAR MANGLA LAKE, DISTRICT MIRPUR, AJK
Abstract
An Ethnomedicinal survey (EM) of Mangla Lake and its adjoining areas, District Mirpur was conducted during the period of spring and summer, 2021. The purpose of survey was to investigate the significant uses of wild medicinal plants in the study area and explore its conservation perspectives. The emphasis was laid down collection of ethnomedicinal information bank (EMI) on the wild medicinal plants of this study area. A number of visits were made to collect the data on different trees and herbs.
During study different plants species including herbs, shrubs and trees were recorded, belonging to different families. A whole number of 50 informants were interviewed by making a questionnaire to know the ethnomedicinal use of wild plants by common people in their daily life. Entire number of 70 plant species belongs to 40 different families were recorded and gathered plants preserved in form of herbarium. The plants with appropriate nomenclature were alphabetically sequenced by botanical name, family name, vernacular name, and ethno medicinal uses. For data validation different statistical tools were used including Informant Consensus Factor (ICF), Data Matrix Ranking (DMR), Fidelity level (FL), and Priority Ranking (PR). The result of collected data indicated that most frequently used part of plants are leaves. Maximum value of ICF was calculated for diarrhoea (0.75) and minimum value of ICF was calculated for Cardiac disorders (0.50). Significant FL was found to be 79% of Azadirachta indicia whereas Solanum nigrum has minimum FL, i.e. 15%. While DMR showed that Ziziphus mauritiana was ranked first due to its multiple uses. Fuel, wood, Fodder and Agricultural expansion were among leading hazard to the diversity of the study area due to man-made activities. It has been also found that the study area has been blessed with huge range of biodiversity but with increase in human settling in the area, flora of the area is in danger and needs comprehensive efforts to protect.