The medical plants use for therapeutic purposes: the students ethnobotanical knowledge in a public and private school in Floriano, Piauí, Brazil

Abstract

Over the years, the population has been using medicinal plants for the treatment of various diseases. This popular knowledge has been handed down from generation to generation as a medicinal alternative based on empirical knowledge. Therefore, this work sought to relate the knowledge about the use of medicinal plants used for therapeutic purposes among high school students of a public and private school in Floriano / PI, as well as to verify how these knowledge can interfere in choosing this natural resource. We adopted an epistemological research, with a qualitative-quantitative approach, in which a questionnaire with objective and subjective questions was applied with 100 students, fifty of the public network and fifty of the private network. It was found that 82% of the public school students and 92% of the private school used the medicine plants. In addition, the families of the plants most cited by the students of both schools were: Lamiaceae, Rutaceae, Verbenaceae and Fabaceae. Some students did not relate the medicinal plants with problems to the organism. Corroborating with this result, most reported that tea does not cause harm by being natural and used for many generations. The part they used most were the leaves and the bark. Therefore, there is a need for more in-depth studies with the objective of evaluating the main biological properties of the specimens used by the students, in order to provide safety in the consumption of these plants.

Keywords

• conhecimento popular
• terapêuticos
• genotóxico
• recurso natural