An Assessment of the Ethnomedicinal Properties of Endemic Flowering Plants of the Western Ghats, India

Western Ghats is a global biodiversity hotspot in India with 7,402 species of flowering plants, of which 1,426 species are endemic. About 40 indigenous tribal communities live in these hill ranges, and they possess several plant-based traditional knowledge practices. This study is a comprehensive review of the ethnomedicinal uses of the plant species endemic to Western Ghats. The ethnomedicinal data of endemic flowering plants were collected from authentic sources such as journals, books, floras, Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, biodiversity portals, institutional reports, and grey literature. These traditional uses were classified into standard disease categories, and their significance as leads towards systematic phyto-pharmacological nutritional studies is evaluated. The total number of traditional uses documented for 126 endemic plant species under 39 categories is 508. The major categories are Food and Nutraceuticals 8.9%, Traditional, Folk Medicines 8.1%, and General Health 6.5%. Our results infer that the native tribal communities of Western Ghats are prioritizing the use of the endemic species for their primary needs of food, nutrition and medicine. Of these time-tested leads only very few have been scientifically investigated so far, and efforts in these lines could result in new drug precursors, f lavours, and nutritional additives.