Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre, Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University, Building E1, Cairns Campus, McGregor Road, Smithfield, QLD, 4878, Australia.
Queensland Herbarium, Department of Environment and Science, Mount Coot-tha Botanical Gardens, Mount Coot-tha Road, Toowong, QLD, 4066, Australia.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2022 Aug 10;18(1):54. doi: 10.1186/s13002-022-00552-6.
Aboriginal peoples have occupied the island continent of Australia for millennia. Over 500 different clan groups or nations with distinctive cultures, beliefs, and languages have learnt to live sustainably and harmoniously with nature. They have developed an intimate and profound relationship with the environment, and their use of native plants in food and medicine is largely determined by the environment they lived in. Over 1511 plant species have been recorded as having been used medicinally in Australia. Most of these medicinal plants were recorded from the Aboriginal communities in Northern Territory, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. Not much has yet been reported on Aboriginal medicinal plants of Queensland. Therefore, the main aim of this review is to collect the literature on the medicinal plants used by Aboriginal peoples of Queensland and critically assess their ethnopharmacological uses.
The information used in this review was collected from archival material and uploaded into the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre (TIEC) database. Archival material included botanist's journals/books and old hard copy books. Scientific names of the medicinal plant species were matched against the 'World Flora Online Plant List', and 'Australian Plant Census' for currently accepted species names to avoid repetition. An oral traditional medical knowledge obtained through interviewing traditional knowledge holders (entered in the TIEC database) has not been captured in this review to protect their knowledge.
This review identified 135 species of Queensland Aboriginal medicinal plants, which belong to 103 genera from 53 families, with Myrtaceae being the highest represented plant family. While trees represented the biggest habit, leaves were the most commonly used plant parts. Of 62 different diseases treated by the medicinal plants, highest number of plants are used for treating skin sores and infections. Few plants identified through this review can be found in other tropical countries but many of these medicinal plants are native to Australia. Many of these medicinal plants are also used as bush food by Aboriginal peoples.
Through extensive literature review, we found that 135 medicinal plants native to Queensland are used for treating 62 different diseases, especially skin infections. Since these medicinal plants are also used as bush food and are rarely studied using the Western scientific protocols, there is a huge potential for bioprospecting and bush food industry.
原住民在澳大利亚大陆上已经居住了数千年。超过 500 个具有独特文化、信仰和语言的部落群体或民族，已经学会了与自然可持续地和谐相处。他们与环境建立了亲密而深刻的关系，他们在食物和药物中使用的本地植物在很大程度上取决于他们生活的环境。在澳大利亚，已有 1511 种植物被记录具有药用价值。这些药用植物大多来自北领地、新南威尔士州、南澳大利亚州和西澳大利亚州的原住民社区。关于昆士兰州原住民药用植物的报道还不多。因此，本综述的主要目的是收集有关昆士兰州原住民使用的药用植物的文献，并批判性地评估其民族药理学用途。
本综述中使用的信息来自档案材料，并上传到热带本土民族植物学中心（TIEC）数据库。档案材料包括植物学家的期刊/书籍和旧的硬拷贝书籍。药用植物的学名与“世界植物在线名录”和“澳大利亚植物普查”进行了匹配，以获得当前接受的物种名称，避免重复。通过采访传统知识持有者（输入 TIEC 数据库）获得的口头传统医学知识，为了保护他们的知识，没有包含在本次综述中。
本综述确定了 135 种昆士兰州原住民药用植物，它们属于 53 个科的 103 属，桃金娘科是最高的植物科。虽然树木代表了最大的植物形态，但叶子是最常用的植物部分。在 62 种不同的疾病治疗中，药用植物中使用最多的是治疗皮肤溃疡和感染。通过本次综述鉴定的少数几种植物可以在其他热带国家找到，但许多药用植物是澳大利亚本土的。这些药用植物中的许多也被原住民用作丛林食物。
通过广泛的文献综述，我们发现 135 种原产于昆士兰州的药用植物用于治疗 62 种不同的疾病，尤其是皮肤感染。由于这些药用植物也被用作丛林食物，而且很少使用西方科学方案进行研究，因此在生物勘探和丛林食物工业方面有巨大的潜力。
