Ethnopharmacological Survey of Medicinal Plants in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China

Objective To document the knowledge and the use of indigenous medicinal plants by traditional healers in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China. Methods Data were collected from 112 randomly-selected interviewees using semi-structured interviews in wild herbal plant collected from 2007 to 2010. The data from the interviewees were analyzed with two quantitative tools. With the informant consensus factor, the information homology was evaluated and with the fidelity level the most important species from the categories were found. Results One hundred and fifty-two species belonging to 112 genera in 48 families with medicinal values were recorded. The reported medicinal plants species were used to treat 63 kinds of diseases. And the medicinal plants in this district possessed significant potentials for their pharmacological activities in the context of ethnopharmacological knowledge, especially in the treatments of gastrointestinal, dermatological, and cardiovascular diseases. Conclusion In this work, 152 medicinal plants with their ethnopharmacological information are reported. This study demonstrates that many species play an important role in healing practices among inhabitants from Baotou. More ethnopharmacological information of Mongolian medicinal plants should be gathered and documented in further studies, which is a fundamental step toward developing efficacious natural drugs for various diseases.