Keywords

Medicinal plants, Odisha, Rheumatism, Conservation.

INTRODUCTION

Odisha is situated in the east coast of the Bay of Bengal of the Indian sub-continent and lies in between 17° 48’-22° 94’N latitude and 81°24’ - 87°29’ E longitude. It is the treasure house of healing herbs, which are being used in Indian system of medicine viz., Auyrveda, Siddha and Unani. However, owing to complex topography and variety of microclimatic parameters, several life forms are not coming to the forefront of common people, out of which the plants of immense medicinal significance deserve special mention.

The mountainous forests of the Deomali hills, Gandhamardan hill range, Mahendragiri hills, Niyamagiri hill range, Malyagiri hills, Similipal Biosphere Reserve and coastal forests including the mangroves and their associates have high degree of biological diversity as well as grand repository of potential medicinal plants. These forests have been the source of invaluable medicinal plants since the time human being realized the preventive and curative properties of plants and started using them for health care for them as well as for their pets. Many of these areas are ethnobotanically resourceful. The aboriginals depend on the forests as well as forest resources to cater their needs like food, cloth, shelter and medicine. The tribal people are not very willing to disclose their knowledge about the uses of the plant/ plant parts being important curative resources except for some commonly useful medicinal properties. In general, they maintain secrecy about the use of certain medicinal plants with a belief that the medicines will lose their healing power, if too many heads know about them.

About 400 plants are used in usual preparation of Ayurvedic, Unani, Siddha and tribal medicine. As far as the information available, these preparations are about 75% from tropical and 25% from temperate forests. Out of which, 30% of these preparations are from roots, 14% from bark, 16% whole plants, 5% from flowers, 10% from fruits, 6% from leaves, 7% from seeds, 3% from wood, 4% from rhizomes and 6% from stems but only less than 20% (including spices) such plants are cultivated [1,2].

In spite of such a resourceful utility, very limited study have been done by Sahoo, Saxena et Dutta, Subudhi et Choudhury on the ethnobotany and ethnomedicine of the state [6,8,10].

METHODOLOGY

Regular field trips were carried out to different resourceful areas of important forests of the state in order to collect information regarding the distribution pattern and flowering time of the plants. Considering the important medicinal utility, the plants were collected and identified in consultation with the regional floras [4,7] and monographs and preserved in the herbarium of the P.G. Department of Botany, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. The part of the plants used to treat rheumatism and over all information of uses was gathered by the method of ethnobotanical investigation. The authenticity of the medicinal importance of the species were carefully examined by the standard literatures [1,3,5,8,9,11].

During the present exploration, only medicinal plant species having broad spectrum of use in healing rheumatism were considered. In the present treatment, habit, species under genera along with their family, vernacular name, where ever available and usable parts with medicinal utility etc. were given. The families are arranged alphabetically and the species are also represented alphabetically under each family. Besides, some conservational strategies have also been provided for the medicinal plants for posterity.

Systematic analysis

A total of 68 angiosperms having rheumatism healing properties and used by the local inhabitants especially the tribals of the forest fringe villages were collected belonging to 62 genera under 37 families (table-1). Acanthaceae is the first dominant family followed by Caesalpiniaceae, Fabaceae and Malvaceae (Fig-1). It indicates that maximum species of Acanthaceae have been utilized in healing rheumatism. Out of 37 families, 25 are monotypic i.e. represented by both single genus and species and 35 are dicot families representing 66 dicot species whereas 2 monocot species under 2 monocot families.

Figure 1: Distribution of genera and species under families

CONSERVATION

From the time immemorial, Odisha was endowed with potential medicinal plants. Recently due to the increasing popularity of Ayurvedic drugs a large number of drug manufacturing companies have been established in the country. As it is found in the practice, many of the medicinal plant collectors supply a large scale of plants/plant parts from the remote forests to the factories without knowing the status and economic importance of these plants. Now, the pressure on the forests in general and medicinal plants found in the forests in particular has been increased significantly. So, the plants are over-exploited leading in to extinction of the species. Shifting cultivation, establishment of industries, clear off of forest lands for human settlement and illegal cutting of tree species to cater various needs have accelerated the process of dwindling of many rare and endangered species.

Odisha state has a great potential to produce large quantity of medicinal products as it has wide range of eco-climatic regions. Although quite a good number of medicinal plants have been wiped away from the state due to the operation of various biotic factors coupled with other abiotic reasons, still Odisha is a grand repository of many indigenous medicinal plants. Hence, appropriate protection and conservational steps are the need of the hour. To conserve the medicinal and aromatic plants, the first step would to prepare a status report on different aspects related to medicinal plant resources in Odisha. These life forms can be conserved by developing medicinal gardens in educational and research institutions in general and Ayurvedic Hospitals in particular. Many indigenous as well as exotic species that were brought from various regions need to be conserved in the herbal gardens by government sponsorship. Modern technology can be utilized such as cryo-preservation along with traditional field gene bank process both in in-situ and ex-situ preservation practices.

In order to promote the cultivation and judicious utilization of medicinal plants, farmers as well as the tribals needs to be trained, educated with the various agrotechniques, processing and marketing of medicinal and aromatic plants. It is quite certain that with a whole hearted effort from the government sector, this may be successful in tribal areas, which are still depending on the collection and selling of non-timber minor forest products for their livelihood.

CONCLUSION

In India, the country people have their own traditional medical knowledge to cure different diseases. Furthermore we found that rheumatism is linked with old age people and this age group is quite experienced in due course of time and each have their method of preparation relating to their traditional origin. The traditional wisdom, embedded with strong cultural relations with nature and natural resources reconcile between conservation and medicinal plant extractions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Indebted thanks are due to the Prof. and Head, P.G. Department of Botany, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar for providing necessary library and laboratory facilities to carry out the work.

REFERENCES

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