However, we also found a general practice of ‘extractive’ documentation of Noongar plant knowledge. This review identified that traditional Noongar access to USOs is taxonomically and geographically extensive, employing specific knowledge and technology to target and maintain resource rich locations. We found that only in 20% of cases could we identify the original source of recorded USO knowledge to an acknowledged Noongar person. We found parallels in employment of specific knowledge and targeted ecological disturbance with First Nations’ practice in other geophyte-rich floristic regions. Additionally, three USO taxa in the SWAFR weed flora are consumed by Noongar people. We estimate that 418 USO taxa across 25 families have Noongar names and/or uses. We have gathered Noongar knowledge of USOs in the SWAFR to better understand the ecological role of Noongar-USO relationships that have existed for millennia. USOs are important to First Nations cultures in other geophyte-rich regions with Mediterranean climate, with specialist knowledge employed, and productive parts of the landscape targeted for harvest, with likely ecological interactions and consequences. We review a significant but scattered literature and oral recounts of USOs utilised by Noongar people of the Southwest Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR). They are reliable year-round resources, especially valuable in seasonal climates.
Underground storage organs (USOs) have long featured prominently in human diets.
Species such as Citrus aurantifolia, Khaya grandifoliola, and Ocimum gratissimum have high quantitative indices suggesting that they are effective in the treatment of various diseases in the community and therefore should be considered for pharmacological studies to validate their folkloric usages. The community has EKI of 0.57 indicating a good knowledge of medicinal plants around them. Telfaria occidentalis has the highest SPI and RFC (0.99, 0.99) while Khaya grandifoliola has the highest CII of 1.91.
Quaqua cala culture skin#
Fevers are the most common diseases treated with the medicinal plants with 1012 use-reports, followed by skin diseases with 314 use-reports while the most common mode of preparation is decoction (37%). Euphorbiaceae is the most implicated family (9%) of the plants documented, and herbs (36%) were the prevalent life form while leaf (46%) was the most used plant part. A total of 87 plant species belonging to 43 families were documented along with their medicinal uses. Data were analyzed using various quantitative indices, namely, Ethnobotanical Knowledge Index (EKI), Species Popularity Index (SPI), Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC), Cultural Importance Index (CII), Informant Consensus Factor (FIC), Fidelity Level (FL), and Species Therapeutic Index (STI). The ethnobotanical survey was carried out by conducting semistructured interviews with 70 informants/collaborators. This paper presents, for the first time, the quantitative ethnobotanical uses of medicinal plants in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. Studies on medicinal ethnobotany in rural areas and communities are important for documentation and generation of indigenous knowledge on the medicinal use of plants, as well as identification of new botanicals of pharmacological significance. The new quantitative method will allow for direct comparisons of the preservation of traditional plant knowledge and the importance of various plants species in different communities.
The best known and most popular indigenous useful plants in the Agter–Hantam are Aloe microstigma (a new species record, with a SPI of 0.97), Hoodia gordonii (SPI=0.94), Microloma sagittatum (0.94), Sutherlandia frutescens (0.92), Quaqua incarnata (0.92) and Galenia africana (0.85).
In the Agter–Hantam, the EKI varied from 0.20 to 0.93 in older people but even young children had EKI values of 0.27. This article also introduces two new terms - the Ethnobotanical Knowledge Index (EKI), a quantitative measure of a person's knowledge of local plant use (value between 0 and 1), and the Species Popularity Index (SPI), a quantitative measure of the importance or popularity of each species (value between 0 and 1). The data include 14 new species records of useful plants 20 new vernacular names and 99 new uses for 46 of the plant species, showing that Khoi–San ethnobotany is still incompletely recorded and that there is an urgent need to document this wealth of traditional knowledge before it is lost forever. The use of a rapid appraisal methodology, followed by a new approach that we refer to as the Matrix Method, has revealed a wealth of traditional knowledge on useful plants amongst people of Khoi–San decent in the Agter–Hantam, Calvinia district, Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
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