Esperança Carrió

Ethnobotany of the Alt Empordà region (Catalonia, Iberian Peninsula): plants used in human traditional medicine.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE This paper provides significant ethnobotanical information on pharmaceutical plant uses from a tourist and industrialised region, where some degree of acculturation exists, so that there is urgency in recording such data. AIM OF THE STUDY To collect, analyze and evaluate the ethnobotanical knowledge about medicinal plants in a north-eastern Iberian region (Alt Empordà, 1358 km(2), 129,160 inhabitants). METHODOLOGY We performed 101 semi-structured interviews with 178 informants (mean age 69; 71% women, 29% men), identified the plant taxa reported and analyzed the results, comparing them with those from other territories. RESULTS The informants reported data on 518 species. Of these, 335, belonging to 80 botanical families, were claimed as medicinal. This work is focused on human medicinal plant uses, which represent 98% of the pharmaceutical uses (3581 out of 3643 use reports). Around 800 medicinal uses, concerning 200 species, have not, or have very rarely been cited as medicinal; of these, 32 uses of 30 species have been reported by three or more independent informants. CONCLUSIONS The folk knowledge about medicinal plant use is still alive in the studied region, and a number of scarcely reported plant uses has been detected, some of them with promising phytotherapeutical applications.

A Matter of Taste: Local Explanations for the Consumption of Wild Food Plants in the Catalan Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands1

A Matter of Taste: Local Explanations for the Consumption of Wild Food Plants in the Catalan Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands. Previous research has documented different trends in the consumption of wild food plants but has rarely analyzed the motivations behind their continued (or lack of) consumption. In this article, we use empirical data to explore the factors driving the consumption of a selected set of wild food plants. We start by analyzing the different trends (i.e., abandonment, maintenance, and valorization) across 21 selected species with different food uses. We then explore the reported motivations that drive such trends using data collected among 354 respondents in three Catalan-speaking rural areas. The consumption of wild food plants is decreasing in the three study areas and across the categories of food use analyzed. Respondents listed sociocultural factors, rather than environmental or economic factors, as more prominent determinants of consumption trends; taste preferences seem to be the most relevant motivation for those who continue to consume wild food plants, whereas a myriad of motivations related to changes in lifestyle were provided by those who explain the abandonment of their consumption.Cuestión de gusto: ¿Qué explica el consumo de plantas silvestres? Estudio en los Pirineos catalanes y las Islas Baleares. Se han documentado diferentes tendencias en el consumo de plantas silvestres comestibles, pero raramente se han analizado las razones que explican por qué algunas plantas se siguen consumiendo y otras no. En base a una selección de plantas silvestres comestibles, en este artículo exploramos los factores que explican las tendencias en el consumo de plantas silvestres. En la primera parte analizamos las tendencias de consumo (abandono, mantenimiento y valorización) de un grupo de 21 especies con diferentes usos alimentarios y en la segunda exploramos las motivaciones esgrimidas por 354 habitantes de tres áreas rurales catalanoparlantes en relación a estas tendencias. El consumo de plantas silvestres parece haber sufrido una reducción generalizada en las áreas prospectadas. Para todas las especies, los encuestados mencionaron factores socioculturales, más que ambientales o económicos, como importantes a la hora de explicar sus patrones de consumo. Específicamente, el sabor parece ser el principal argumento para aquellos que continúan consumiendo plantas silvestres mientras que una combinación de motivos relacionados con cambios en estilos de vida predomina entre las explicaciones de aquellos que han abandonado su consumo.

Plant Ethnoveterinary Practices in Two Pyrenean Territories of Catalonia (Iberian Peninsula) and in Two Areas of the Balearic Islands and Comparison with Ethnobotanical Uses in Human Medicine

This paper presents the results of an ethnobotanical study centred in veterinarian uses in two Catalan Pyrenean regions (Alt Empordà -AE- and High River Ter Valley -AT-, Iberian peninsula) and two Balearic Islands areas (Formentera -FO- and northeastern Mallorca -MA-). In the areas studied, 97 plant species have been claimed to be useful for veterinary purposes. A total of 306 veterinary use reports have been gathered and analysed. The ten most reported plants are Tanacetum parthenium (24 use reports), Parietaria officinalis (15), Ranunculus parnassifolius (14), Meum athamanticum (13), Olea europaea (13), Quercus ilex (12), Ruta chalepensis (12), Sambucus nigra (10) and Thymus vulgaris (10). According to comprehensive reviews, a high number of novelties for plant ethnoveterinary are contributed: 34 species and one subspecies, 11 genera, and three families have not been reported in previous works in this field, and 21 species had only been mentioned once. Several ethnoveterinary uses are coincidental with those in human medicine. Although ethnoveterinary practices are less relevant than in the past in the territories considered, as in all industrialised countries, the knowledge on plant properties and applications is still rich and constitutes a large pool of evidence for phytotherapy, both in domestic animals and humans.

Beyond food and medicine, but necessary for life, too: other folk plant uses in several territories of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands

BackgroundEthnobotanical academic research, particularly in European industrialised countries, has been, and is, mostly focused on folk uses of food and medicinal plants. Nevertheless, other uses, as may well be supposed, account for a significant portion of these folk uses. In the Catalan linguistic domain, a considerable amount of ethnobotanical work has been produced, but to date almost nothing has been published on these other plant uses.MethodsWe basically used the method of semistructured interviews to collect data on names, knowledge and use of plants in the above-mentioned fields from 759 informants in three Catalonian (Alt Empordà, Montseny and Ripollès) and two Balearic (Formentera and Mallorca) areas. We identified the plants quoted by the informants and prepared herbarium vouchers. We analysed and compared the results obtained.ResultsInformation has been collected on 401 genera, 552 species, 81 subspecies and four varieties, belonging to 122 families, totalling 4137 use reports for popular non-food and non-medicinal uses (classified in 14 modalities), and designated with 1303 folk Catalan names. The informant consensus factor is 0.87, accounting for a consistent and robust dataset.ConclusionContrarily to what could be thought a priori, and irrespective of the fact that some uses are declining or changing, non-medicinal and non-food folk plant uses strongly persist in the territories considered, are highly considered by their practitioners, and may even imply some economic revenues.

A phylogenetic road map to antimalarial Artemisia species

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE The discovery of the antimalarial agent artemisinin is considered one of the most significant success stories of ethnopharmacological research in recent times. The isolation of artemisinin was inspired by the use of Artemisia annua in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2015. Antimalarial activity has since been demonstrated for a range of other Artemisia species, suggesting that the genus could provide alternative sources of antimalarial treatments. Given the stunning diversity of the genus (c. 500 species), a prioritisation of taxa to be investigated for their likely antimalarial properties is required. MATERIALS AND METHODS Here we use a phylogenetic approach to explore the potential for identifying species more likely to possess antimalarial properties. Ethnobotanical data from literature reports is recorded for 117 species. Subsequent phylogenetically informed analysis was used to identify lineages in which there is an overrepresentation of species used to treat malarial symptoms, and which could therefore be high priority for further investigation of antimalarial activity. RESULTS We show that these lineages indeed include several species with documented antimalarial activity. To further inform our approach, we use LC-MS/MS analysis to explore artemisinin content in fifteen species from both highlighted and not highlighted lineages. We detected artemisinin in nine species, in eight of them for the first time, doubling the number of Artemisia taxa known to content this molecule. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that artemisinin may be widespread across the genus, providing an accessible local resource outside the distribution area of Artemisia annua.