Ethnobotanical Studies on the Use of Medicinal Plants among Forest Fringe Communities around the Kasewe Forest in Moyamba District, Southern Sierra Leone
Forests are home to many flora and fauna species.
Forest flora have been very important to man and sustainability of forest
ecosystem. Forest flora provides provisional, regulatory, protective and
cultural services. These services have been the foundation of civilization and
development. Local communities depend on these natural resources for livelihood
generation and cultural services. Local communities have been using medicinal
plants to cure different ailments. In this study, an ethnobotanical survey was
conducted to document medicinal plants diversity and use in forest fringe
communities. The study adopted a method used by Martin in 1995 on
Ethnobotanical reviews of medicinal plants. Ethnobotanical information was
gathered through structured questionnaires administered to 57 inhabitants
constituting key informants, community leaders, and household heads who are
believed to have vast indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants. The snowball
technique was used to identify respondents in communities around the Kasewe
forest. For the diversity of medicinal plants use and associated indigenous knowledge,
a plot of size 25 m × 25 m was demarcated with a linear tape and ranging poles
in the different habitat types in the study area. Sampling was stratified based
on the size of habitat types. A total of 10 sample plots comprising of 4 plots
in the closed forest; 3 plots in disturbed areas, 2 plots in farmland, and 1
plot in the grassland were studied. A total of 3377 individual plant stems were
documented comprising of 84 individual species belonging to 53 families and 78
genera. Of the 84 individual plant species, 42 were medicinal. The most
dominant family was Malvaceae. Tree species were the most dominant life form
representing 32.14% followed by shrubs 30.5, herbs 26.8% and climbers 10%.
Majority of the plant species are of little conservation concern and few have
been categorized as endangered and vulnerable that need special conservation
attention. Species with the highest density was Chromolaenaodorata 110 m2, while Xylopia quintais 0.1 m2 had the least density per
hector. The Shannon-wiener index recorded 1.236 as the highest in plot 3 while
plot 10 in the grassland was considered as the lowest with 0.757. The finding
revealed that 92.98% of respondents around the Kasewe forest in the Moyamba
district used medicinal plants to treat therapeutic ailments. At the same time,
a very limited proportion depends on other medication sources to treat
therapeutic ailments. 98.25% of the respondents, mostly older people,
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