ETHNOBOTANICAL ASSESSMENT OF HERBAL PLANTS IN SOUTH-WESTERN NIGERIA

Medicinal plants have been observed to be very effective in the treatment of ailments that defile orthodox medicine. Despite this, only few people know the location and uses of most of the plants around them due to inadequate knowledge of their usefulness. In this study, common plants used by the indigenous people of Southwestern Nigeria were classified based on their locations, types and uses. These plants were briefly described and their local names provided. The study revealed that 82% of the plants used for treating ailments were sourced from the wild, while 18% were cultivated. Most of the medicinal plants were wantonly destroyed as a result of inadequate information. However, in order to sustain the practice of traditional medicine as a subsystem of the health system, it is imperative to encourage the cultivation of these fast disappearing and endangered plants by the rural farmers as a quick way of initiating short-term conservation measure, while awaiting longer policies embedded in the realms of legislation