Medicinal plants sold in Gaziantep herbalists and their ethnobotanical aspects

Many medicinal plants have been used for different purposes in pharmaceutical, food, perfumery and cosmetics in Turkey for ancient times. In Turkey, these plants are generally collected carelessly, sold by people who do not have enough knowledge about its trade and usage and consumed unconsciously. In this case, even the medicinal plants which are beneficial to health can become quite harmful for people. In Gaziantep the number and variety of medicinal plants sold in herbalists is increasing day by day. However, it appears that most herbalists do not have sufficient knowledge about the properties of these medicinal plants. For this reason an ethnobotanical survey was made to collect information on the use of medicinal plants in Gaziantep. This study was carried out with the assistance of 30 traditional medicinal plant holders in city center using a questionnaire. Information regarding Latin name, public name, part(s) used, medicinal uses, preparations of plants were collected with this questionnaires. According to survey 122 plant taxa were members of Lamiaceae (10 taxa), Apiaceae (9 taxa) and Asteraceae (9 taxa), Rosaceae (7 taxa), Fabaceae (6 taxa) and Malvaceae (6 taxa). The highest number of taxa were used for gastrointestinal, the diuretic, respiratory, diabetic, cardiovascular-cholesterol disorders and as sedative. Most of the remedies were prepared from single-species plants. However some mixtures were proposed by health-care practitioner.