Ethnomedicinal plants of Farouj district, North Khorasan province, Iran

Background & Aim: Medicinal plants are one of the most valuable resources in Iran, having a scientific knowledge and proper use; they can play an important role in community health. Some of the significant aims of ethnobotany project are to indicate the most common medicinal species, finding out the exact application of the plant species from various population of the area, and proving the knowledge of ethnobotany among human beings. Experimental: To achieve these goals, the project has been conducted in Farouj, North Khorasan province, Iran in 2014-2015. To acquire ethnobotanical data of the studied area, several steps were taken such as the accumulation of plants, interviews with native people, and distribution of the questionnaires. Some important indices such as the relative frequency of citation (RFC), informant agreement ratio (IAR), and cultural important index (CI) were estimated. Furthermore, a traditional null hypothesis testing was adopted. Results & Discussion: A total of 91 taxa belonging to 29 families were identified, 73 of which are grown naturally in the studied area. Asteraceae and Brassicaceae were the most detected families with 16 and 9 genera, respectively. Other diseases and digestive ones are the most curable ailments in Farouj County. Most of the parts of the plants that were collected consist of leaves (22%), whole plants (18%) and seeds (14%), orderly. Vitis vinifera L. has the maximum relative frequency of citation and cultural importance indices. Farouj area has a great potential in the growing of pharmaceutical plants. This research has been done for the first time in this area. Industrial and practical recommendations: Plant extracts can be used as cure for many diseases and some extracts might have new beneficial effects on illness.