Conservation and sustainable use of the medicinal Leguminosae plants from Angola

PeerJ

article

Silvia Catarino¹  Maria Cristina Duarte³  Esperança Costa⁴  Paula Garcia Carrero³  Maria M. Romeiras¹ 

[1] Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food ,(LEAF), Instituto Superior de Agronomia ,(ISA), Universidade de Lisboa;Forest Research Center ,(CEF), Instituto Superior de Agronomia ,(ISA), Universidade de Lisboa;Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes ,(cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa;Centro de Botânica, Universidade Agostinho Neto

关键词: Ethnobotany;    Conservation;    Fabaceae;    Timber species;    Southern Africa;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6736

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Leguminosae is an economically important family that contains a large number of medicinal plants, many of which are widely used in African traditional medicine. Angola holds a great socio-cultural diversity and is one of the richest floristic regions of the world, with over 900 native Leguminosae species. This study is the first to assess the medicinal uses of the legumes in Angola and provides new data to promote the conservation and the sustainable use of these unique resources. We document the ethnobotanical knowledge on Angola by reviewing the most important herbarium collections and literature, complemented by recent field surveys. Our results revealed that 127 native legume species have medicinal uses and 65% of them have other important uses by local populations. The species with most medicinal applications are Erythrina abyssinica, Bauhinia thonningii and Pterocarpus angolensis. The rich flora found in Angola suggests an enormous potential for discovery of new drugs with therapeutic value. However, the overexploitation and the indiscriminate collection of legumes for multiple uses such as forage, food, timber and medical uses, increases the threats upon the native vegetation. Efforts to assess the conservation status of these species are urgently needed, and future actions should promote the sustainable use of medicinal plants in Angola together with the implementation of conservation strategies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY