Department of Biology, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Kotebe Metropolitan University, P.O. Box 31248, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, College of Natural Sciences, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 3434, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2020 May 24;16(1):27. doi: 10.1186/s13002-020-00377-1.
Ethnic groups throughout the world have developed their own cultures expressed in the form of customs, taboos, and traditional healthcare systems. Traditional medicine system is one of the widespread cultures known throughout the world which is very much tied to cultural practices of the community or ethnic group. Medicinal plant treasure found in Gurage and Silti zones remained poorly characterized and understood. Therefore, this study was conducted in four ethnic groups: three from Gurage zone (Gurage, Qebena, and Mareqo) and one from Silti zone (Silti) which have lived in close proximity and contact for many centuries in the respective zones. In the present study, unique and shared cultural elements in connection to traditional herbal medicine were examined through investigation of the diversity of medicinal plants. Moreover, attempts have been made to determine similarities among the society in the medicinal plants they have used in general and in medicinal plant species considered culturally most important.
In a study that involved 320 randomly sampled informants, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation were used and qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Descriptive statistics, rank order priority (ROP), informant consensus factor, Jaccard similarity coefficient, and clustering were used for data analysis.
A total of 244 medicinal plant species and a fungal species used to treat human and/or livestock ailments were documented. The number of plants (80 plants, 33 %) with ROP value greater than 50% were considerably fewer than that of plants with ROP < 50% (164, 67 %). Jaccard similarity index and clustering analysis for all cited plants, among the respective studied districts, indicated that grouping generally followed the existing ethnic origin. On the contrary, clustering based on culturally important medicinal plant species (80 plant species, score ROP ≥ 50%) showed the influence of proximity and geographical orientation rather than ethnic relation.
Culturally, most important plants (80 spp.) are widely used and best shared with nearby communities and this could imply current (new) knowledge being practiced in the communities. This knowledge must be documented and better utilized in a modern way including modernized use of traditional medicinal plants.
世界各地的民族都形成了自己的文化，以习俗、禁忌和传统医疗体系的形式表现出来。传统医学体系是世界范围内广泛存在的文化之一，与社区或民族的文化习俗密切相关。古尔加和西尔提地区发现的药用植物宝藏仍然没有得到很好的描述和理解。因此，这项研究在四个民族中进行：三个来自古尔加地区（古尔加、奎贝纳和马雷科），一个来自西尔提地区（西尔提），他们在各自的地区已经生活了几个世纪，彼此之间非常接近和接触。在本研究中，通过调查药用植物的多样性，研究了与传统草药相关的独特和共同的文化元素。此外，还试图确定他们在一般药用植物和被认为在文化上最重要的药用植物物种方面使用的社会之间的相似之处。
在一项涉及 320 名随机抽样的受访者的研究中，使用了半结构式访谈、焦点小组讨论和参与式观察，并收集了定性和定量数据。使用描述性统计、秩优先顺序（ROP）、信息共识因子、雅卡尔相似系数和聚类进行数据分析。
共记录了 244 种药用植物和一种真菌物种，用于治疗人类和/或牲畜疾病。具有 ROP 值大于 50%的植物（80 种，33%）的数量明显少于 ROP 值小于 50%的植物（164 种，67%）。根据各自研究地区的所有被引用植物的雅卡尔相似指数和聚类分析，表明分组通常遵循现有的民族起源。相反，基于文化上重要的药用植物物种（80 种，ROP 值≥50%）的聚类显示了接近度和地理方位的影响，而不是民族关系的影响。
从文化上讲，最重要的植物（80 种）被广泛使用，并与附近的社区最佳共享，这可能意味着目前（新）知识正在社区中实践。必须记录和更好地以现代方式利用这些知识，包括传统药用植物的现代化利用。
