A model to analyse the ecology and diversity of ethnobotanical resources: case study for Granada Province, Spain
Identificadores
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/89100Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteEditorial
Springer Nature
Date
2016-04-04Referencia bibliográfica
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-016-1092-z
Résumé
In recent decades, a number of ethnobotanical studies have been developed in
many territories, but only a few studies deal with the ecology of the botanical resources,
apart from those focused on the so-called ethnoecology, i.e., on the local perceptions of the
ecological issues of used plants and their environment. Ethnobotanical resources are
known by local people and are normally gathered from the wild, therefore altering the
environment in which they grow. From a performed database of all ethnobotanical
resources used in Granada Province (South Spain), we analysed several botanical issues,
such as the main represented botanical families, biological types, and the biological
spectrum. Complementing this classical analysis, in order to establish a new model to
know which habitats are more visited and therefore altered by plant collections, we performed
an ecological study. For this study, an ecological adscription of the botanical
resources was made on the basis of the phytosociological method. Some important questions
for us developed during our long time field ethnobotanical work are analysed and
commented. For example, the fact that generally people do not gather many plants from
mountain summits, only a few medicinal plants without a relative-substitute in lowlands.
Differences of the visited habitats in order to collect medicinal or edible wild plants are
also analysed. A final brief analysis deals with the relation of the ecology of some ethnobotanical
resources with their chemical compounds, focusing on alkaloidic plants: most
plants with alkaloid generally grow in nitrogen-rich soils in which any type of nitrophilous
vegetation is developed.