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

Ethnopharmacological relevanceThis 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 studyTo collect, analyze and evaluate the ethnobotanical knowledge about medicinal plants in a north-eastern Iberian region (Alt Empordà, 1358 km2, 129,160 inhabitants).MethodologyWe 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.ResultsThe 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.ConclusionsThe 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.