TRADITIONAL MEDICINAL PLANT RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN PACHCHAMALAIS IN TRICHIRAPALLI DT TAMILNADU, INDIA: IMPLICATION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE IN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Traditional medicinal plants survey was carried out to collect the information about the medicinal plants found in Southern Pachchamalais and utilized by the ethinic people of Study area. The intensive and extensive ethno botanical fields studies have resulted in the collection of 40 medicinal plant species belonging to 38 genera distributed in 29 families, which are used in traditional health care system are described under this study and also attempted to find out the medicines prepared out of these medicinal plants, forms of medicine and their matching ailments. In this communication, the information obtained from the local people was compared with the literatures on ethnobotanical studies of India. The documented medicinal plants were mostly used to cure skin diseases, Jaundice, diabetes, wounds and rheumatism. The medicinal plants used by the people are arranged alphabetically, and followed by their botanical name, family name, local name(s), part(s) used, mode of preparation and their corresponding diseases.