A Comprehensive Ethnopharmacological Survey of Medicinal Plants for 80 Villages in Trabzon (Turkey)

Ethnobotanical relevance: Many medicinal taxa have been preferred as a source of medicine to treatment for assorted diseases since early human history. Trabzon city, located in the northeast of Turkey, possesses important ethnopharmacological potency due to its rich plant diversity, historical past, and hosting a wide variety of cultures.Aim of the study: The current study targeted to perform qualitative and quantitative analysis based on comprehensive ethnopharmacological data of medicinal plant taxa used in folk medicine in 80 villages of Trabzon.Materials and methods: Ethnopharmacological data including family name, scientific name, local name, used parts, therapeutic uses, preparation methods, administration routes, and cited locations were gathered by face-to-face interviews with 645 participants mostly over 50 years old, from September 2018 to December 2020. The quantitative analyses were executed by the determination of frequency values of citation (FC), use value (UV), fidelity level (FL), and informant consensus factor (ICF).Results: A total of 120 medicinal plant taxa belonging to 55 families were recorded with the traditional therapeutic uses for more than 100 different diseases. The most commonly used plant part and administration routes were detected as leaves (32.43%) and oral application (51.58%), respectively. The highest ICF value was assigned for diseases of the skin (ICF: 0.96) among 16 different diseases categories. Piceae orientalis possessed the highest value of FC (82.326%), while Plantago major owned the highest value of UV (0.873). Tilia rubra subsp. caucasica, Vaccinium myrtillus and Nicotiana tabacum were the remarkable taxa due to their FL value (100%), besides the high number of user reports.Conclusion: Present study supplies comprehensive ethnopharmacological qualitative and quantitative data (FC, UV, FL, and ICF) from 80 villages in Trabzon. The obtained ethnopharmacological data are expected both provide the preliminary information to discover novel herbal drugs and passing on to next generations as an important heritage.