Villagers use 245 species of medicinal herbs to cure diseases

Islamabad : Around 245 plant species belonging to 77 families are being used by the villagers living in the vicinity of Margallah Hills National Park for their varied ethno-botanical importance.

These plant species include 55 trees species, 54 shrubs, 105 herbs, 15 climbers, 10 grasses and 6 fodder crops that have a wide range of chemical diversity with regard to preparation of the medicines.

According to an official document, the Margalla Hills National Park has Dodonaea viscosa, Pinus roxburgii, Apluda mutica and Quercus incana community on the north facing slopes and Acacia modesta and Woodfordia fruticosa community on the south facing slopes.

The use of these plant species is restricted to local people in the Margalla Hills National Park who collect them according to their requirements.

The ethno-botanical uses of plants are categorized into ten broad categories. Major proportion of these plant species are used as native medicine (64.89%) and second major use of these plant species is as fodder (32.24%) for their livestock.

Forty seven plants (19.18%) are used as fuel wood, thirty three (13.46%) are used as food (fruit), eighteen (7.34%) as food (vegetable), fourteen (5.71%) as timber, six (2.44%) as industrial, four (1.63%) as tannin, three (1.22%) as gum and two (0.81%) are used as fibre.

Out of 6,000 species of vascular plants in Pakistan about 1,000 species have been recognized to possess phyto-chemical properties.

Around 40,000 to 50,000 practitioners of Greco-Arabic and folk-medicine and a number of unregistered practitioners scattered in rural and remote hilly areas use more than 200 drug plants in traditional and folk-medicines as household remedies for several diseases.

The document concluded that the ethno-botanical knowledge of the local people of Margalla Hills National Park provides an insight into the new or less known medicinal herbs and also gives new material for the pharmacological research.