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Geographical barriers and their influence on indiginous knowledge of local flora

¹Muhammad Asad Ghufran*, ²Aniqa Batool, ¹Maria Ali, ³Zafar Iqbal, ⁴Fakhar-i-Abbas, ⁵Muhammad Ashraf and ⁵Rizwana Aleem Qureshi

Abstract: Isolation of adjoining human population due to geographical barriers, role of such berries in restriction of access to resources, dependence of such communities on the local flora and their ethnobotanic knowledge operate in a close interaction. The study is based on an interdisciplinary survey performed in two neighboring valleys of Western Himalayas. These valleys are similar in most of the features of terrain, with no  passageway except at an altitude of ca. 5500 meters called “Shoontar Pass” with a very rare cross movement by local residents but some nomads with their herds usually cross it in spring and autumn. Although the floristic composition, natural resources and most of the climatic conditions were similar, however, the ethnobotanical data collected from both valleys exhibited manifest variation in traditional knowledge about use of local flora. Some of common plat species associated to the timberline vegetation were reported to possess very different ethnobotanic uses on both sides.

Floristic list is represented by a total of 207 species belonging to 138 genera of 42 Angiospermic families. Asteraceae is found to be the largest family having most of the useful plants, represented by 37 species. The second largest family is Lamiaceae (Labiatae) consisting  about 17 species. The other families are represented by various number of species ranges from 1-16 species, used in various parts of study area. Ethnobotanical studies include 146 species belonging to 102 genera and 35 families.

¹ Department of Environmental Science, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan 44000;

² Department of Environmental Sciences, PMAS Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan 46000;

³ Department of Botany Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan;

⁴  Institute of Natural and Management Sciences, Rawalpindi;

⁵ Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, 44000-Corresponding Author Address: ghufran@hawaii.edu