Exploration and documentation of ethnobotanicals used by traditional healers from Purulia district of West Bengal, India

Traditional healers of the Purulia district use their traditional knowledge in ethnomedicine for the treatment of several human ailments. The main objective of this investigation is to gather information on medicinal plants used to treat various ailments by local inhabitants of the Purulia district and document them in digitized form. All the information such as various doses, methods of formulations, and modes of administration were recorded along with the local name, family, plant parts used, and short profile of information the basis of semi semi-structured questionnaire and focus group discussions. A total of 51 herbal plants under 34 families are used by the informants either as a mono herbal drug or polyherbal drug to treat various ailments. The most commonly used plant part is the leaf followed by the root, whole plant, flower, fruit, bark, bulb, latex, stem, and rhizome. These plant parts are used to treat dermatological problems, general health problems, abdominal problems, and ear, nose, throat problems. Ethnobotanical data was analyzed using appropriate statistical methods such as use value and fidelity level. Hence, this could be summarized that collected ethnobotanical information on therapeutic plants of the Purulia district was documented in digitalized form for knowledge preservation for further studies on them as well as by pharmaceutical industries.


INTRODUCTION
Plants possess medicinal properties due to the presence of diverse bioactive compounds.Since antiquity, several reports have been published on medicinal plants in drug discovery [1].Medicinal plants are considered as primary health care system for the rural population in many countries till now [2].Utilizing plants for medication is less detrimental and also less expensive [1].To reduce human suffering, herbs have played an important role in traditional and also in the new generation [3].Primeval ethno pharmacology has been contemplated as a major tool in the new drug discovery.Herbal medicines are a favored form of complementary and substitute medicine practiced worldwide to treat various types of disorders [4].Indigenous use of botanicals takes part in a crucial role in human and livestock wellness in a wider part of the world notably in impoverished and developing countries [3].Crude herbal compositions with or without additives are described to have an outstanding therapeutic value [3].As reported by Sofowora [5] about 60%-85% of the inhabitants in the countries of the developing world have to depend on traditional medicine [5].The application of traditional medicine is extensive in India, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Pakistan, and China [6,4].
India is rich in medicinal plants.From the ancient period plants were used to cure various diseases in different districts in India [7].Ethnomedicinal plants are also used widely in Ayurvedic treatment [8].
Almost 25% of modern medicines are obtained from nature, some of which were extracted from traditional uses [9].Humans depend greatly on plants and their products for food, shed, clothing, and also for their benefaction to support the ecosystem [10].The tribal people live in or near the forest Purulia covers 6,259 km 2 area [13].In summer the average temperature of this area is 40ºC and in winter the average temperature is 10ºC [2].Here, the rainfall ranges between 1,100 and 1,500 mm yearly [13].The flora of the district is comprised of several species of medicinal plants.The vegetation in the district ranges from tropical deciduous forests to dry scrublands and grasslands.The forest part shows several species of trees including sal, teak, bamboo, and mahua [13].

Ethnobiological data collection and analysis
The field study was conducted in 10 sessions from July 2021 to February 2022 based on ethnobiological investigations.Around five to six traditional healers participated in each session.A total number of 55 traditional healers participated in this study.Key informants belonging to various age groups were selected based on age, ethnicity, knowledge about ethnobotanical drugs, minimum 5 years of experience in healing, and recommendations obtained from local leaders of the villages.Informants were assured by me that data obtained from this study would be used only for research purposes.All informants were more than 18 years of age and participated voluntarily.Informants were also found intense knowledge about habit type, flowering time, method of preparation, and side effects of ethnobotanicals.A sheet of semi-structured questionnaire was prepared to collect data systematically along with a short profile of informants.
As the authors know the native language of healers so semistructured questionnaire were prepared in Bengali for the data collection based on the standard ethnobotanical method [13,14].In this study, health problems were area so they collect the plants easily and make use of them for treatment of diseases caused by some infectious pathogens [11].The healers of particular tribal regions use different parts of plants and make a paste with the help of different natural ingredients and apply them on the patients' wounded areas or instruct them to take the medicines orally for a certain period [12].
The tribal people of the Purulia district follow the traditional ethnomedicinal practices for the treatment of many diseases.The medicine men collect the necessary plant materials from the forest according to the diseases and make medicine from them and give them to the sick persons [2].The documentation of traditional knowledge of ethnobotanicals in the study area provides a scientific database for the validation and preservation of traditional knowledge [13].It also opens up opportunities for future research and development of new plant-based medicines [3].The conservation and sustainable use of ethnobotanicals can contribute to the socio-economic development of local communities as well as ensure the availability of these plants for future generations [13].This study will contribute to the documentation of traditional knowledge on medicinal plants in the Purulia district of West Bengal, India.

Study area
Purulia is situated in the westward of West Bengal in India (Figure 1).It has a latitude and longitude of 22ºC6′ to 23ºC5′ N and 85ºC7′ to 86ºC6′ E, respectively.Geographically,  Medicinal plants mentioned by at least four informants were taken into consideration.Several plant species were collected mostly in their flowering stage for their identification but rare and protected species were avoided during the field study.These protected species were photographed only whenever possible.Some plant specimens were collected to make a herbarium and identified by herbarium specimens of the Botanical Survey of India, and rare and protected species were identified with the help of books and other authentic documents [15][16][17][18] Nomenclatures were verified using the database available in the online at www.ipni.org.The ethnomedicinal plants mentioned in this study were arranged alphabetically.Local names of plants, scientific names, family, therapeutic use, parts of the plants that are used, method of preparation, and mode of administration were stated in the present study.Collected information was evaluated using specific quantitative parameters viz.fidelity level (FL) and use value (UV) [19].

Use value
The UV validates the comparative importance of plants recognized locally in folk medicine [20].UV was calculated using the following formula: UV = ∑U/n      1).The majority of the preparations in the study area were made from dried parts of ethnobotanicals followed by fresh parts.
Traditional healers employ different methods of formulations of conventional medicine for the treatment of various ailments.A total number of 20 mono-herbal formulations (MFs) and 13 polyherbal formulations (PFs) were reported as shown in Table 2.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
We report a total of 51 ethnobotanicals belonging to 34 plant families which are used directly or with some additives for the treatment of 8 different health problems in Purulia district.A high number of species reported designates that the district has a wide diversity of flora used against various ailments and rich indigenous traditional knowledge.Families Asteraceae, Apocyanaceae, and Amaranthaceae are widely documented in herbal formulations in parts of the district [2,13].Asteraceae is reported to have a wide range of bioactive constituents thus contributing to the high UV of members of the family for medicinal purposes [13].The UV of G. bidens (Retz) Veldkamp under Asteraceae is high as the different parts of it provide the necessary properties to cure diseases [2].Dried parts of ethnobotanical plants are used widely as they are easy to preserve for a long time even when the season is not favorable for the particular plants to grow.Some healthy fresh parts of the plants are also used in some cases of disease treatment.This study corroborates the findings of Modak et al. [13].In the present study, healers preferring to use leaves in comparison to other plant parts.The use of leaves for medicinal purposes is preferred by most ethnobotanical studies because they are available in most seasons and they are quickly reachable in the time of urgent situations [2,13].The tribal people usually face dermatological problems possibly because of poor skin hygiene, environment, and weak immune system [9].So, dermatological conditions are mostly treated.In most cases, the drug formulation is made from PFs because the mutual effect of the phytochemicals of different plants may recover the rate of curing [23][24][25].Ethnobotanicals with high where UV represents the UV of species, U represents the total number of respondents who reported the use of particular species, and n represents the total number of informants interviewed for a specific plant.High UV indicates the particular plant is medicinally important and it has several uses [21].

Fidelity level
The percentage of informants affirming the use of a specific plant species for a similar major perseverance was calculated through FL [22].
The formula is as follows: FL (%) = N P /N × 100 Here, FL is FL, N P describes the number of informants who independently mentioned the use of a species for the same diseases, and N describes the total number of informants who indicated the plant for any specific ailment [21].

Medicinal plant diversity and distribution
Medicinal plants were enlisted with scientific names and author citations, followed by local names, families, habits, and plant parts used against each disease (Table 1).Fifty-one plant species were identified and documented in this study which belonged under 51 genera and 34 plant families (Table 1).The highest number of medicinal plants were recorded in Asteraceae (7 species) followed by Amaranthaceae (3 species), Euphorbiaceae (3 species), and Malvaceae (2 species).It was found that the same plant species have a same local name in various parts of the study area among the different ethnic communities.This gives a strong homogeneity of vernacular nomenclature among inhabitants in the Purulia district, which is an indication of the transfer of indigenous knowledge.Medicinal plants were unevenly distributed to different blocks of the district but most of the species were available to Ajodhya Hill, Pancheyet Hill, Rakab Forest, Murguma Forest area, Bandwan Forest area, and Tara Forest.

Ethnomedicinal use of plants stated by the selected informants and documentation of their usage
The distribution of plant habit types and plant part (s) used are illustrated in Figures 2 and 3, respectively.Among the various habit types, 46.15% were herbaceous plants, 26.92% trees, 15.38% shrubs, 5.76% climbers, 3.84% vines, and 1.92% grasses were used for the treatment of diseases (Fig. 2).Among the parts used, leaves were the most preferable plant parts (52%), followed by roots (13%), flowers, whole plants, fruits, aerial parts, bark, latex, and bulbs as shown in Figure 3.
The majority of the identified medicinal plants were used for the treatment of dermatological problems (59.61%),

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Percentage of habit types of the studied plants used for the treatment of some diseases.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Percentage of plant parts utilized for the medication.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Percentage of plant specimens used for medication of a particular health problem.

Table 1 .
Ethnobotanical used for some diseases treatment.
characterized into eight major groups such as dermatological problems, general health problems, abdominal problems, ear, nose, throat problems, nephrological problems, hormonal problems, orthopedic problems, and nervous problems.

Table 2 .
Specific details of formulations for treatment.
MF, Monoherbal Formulations (One Plant used for formulations); PF, Polyherbal Formulations (More than one plant used for formulations).

Table 3 .
FL of described plants.