Abstract
Ethnopharmacological relevance
Given
the importance of local markets as a source of medicinal plants for
both healers and the population, literature on market flows and the
value of the plant material traded is rather scarce. This stands in
contrast to wealth of available information for other components of
Bolivian ethnobotany. The present study attempts to remedy this
situation by providing a detailed inventory of medicinal plant markets
in the La Paz-El Alto metropolitan area, hypothesizing that both species
composition, and medicinal applications, have changed considerably over
time.
Materials and Methods
From
October 2013 – October 2015 semi–structured interviews were conducted
with 39 plant vendors between October 2013 and October 2015 in the
Mercado Rodriguez, Mercado Calle Santa Cruz, Mercado Cohoni, Mercado
Cota Cota, and Mercado Seguencoma and Mercado El Alto in order to
elucidate more details on plant usage and provenance. The results of the
present study were then compared to previous inventories of medicinal
plants in La Paz and El Alto studies to elucidate changes over time and
impact of interview techniques.
Results
In
this study we encountered 163 plant species belonging to 127 genera and
58 families. In addition, 17 species could not be identified. This
species richness is considerably higher than that reported in previous
studies (2005, 129 species of 55 families; 2015, 94 identified species).
While the overall distribution of illness categories is in line with
older reports the number of species used per application, as well as the
applications per species, were much higher in the present study.
Overall, informant consensus was relatively low, which might be
explained by the large number of new species that have entered the local
pharmacopoeia in the last decade, although some species might simply
have been missed by previous studies. In course of the present study it
became apparent that even well known species might often be replaced by
other apparently similar but botanically unrelated species due to
environmental and market forces
Conclusions
The
present study indicated that, while the floristic composition of
markets in the La Paz metropolitan area remained relatively constant
over the last decade, with this inventory adding about 20% of species to
previous studies, the number of indications for which certain species
were used increased tremendously, and that profound differences exist
even between markets in close proximity. The dramatic increase in
previously not used species used per indication might pose serious risks
for consumers. We found serious problems due to species replacements.
Even plants that have a well established vernacular name, and are easily
recognizable botanically, can be replaced by other species that can
pose a serious health risk. Vendor education and stringent
identification of the material sold in public markets are clearly
needed.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
- Medicinal plants;
- Markets;
- Bolivia;
- Globalization
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