Traditional Uses of Medicinal Plants in Artuklu, Turkey

Abstract

We conducted an ethnobotanical field study of traditional medicinal plants in 91 villages of Artuklu District among four ethnic groups: Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, and Assyrian. We interviewed 365 elderly informants and recorded traditional uses of 85 identified botanical taxa, including four endemic species previously unidentified as medicinal plants: Arum rupicola Boiss., Gundelia mesopotamica Fırat, Alkanna trichophila Hub.-Mor., and Crocus leichtlinii (Dewar) Bowles. We gathered data specifically on medicinal uses of these taxa to determine the relative importance of the species surveyed and calculate the informant consensus factor (FIC) in relation to medicinal plant use. The highest use values were recorded for the species Teucrium polium L. (0.78), Urtica dioica L. (0.60) and Crataegus azarolus L., (0.59), while the highest FIC was for gynecological diseases (0.93).