Determination of the ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal properties of the plants growing in villages and center of Akkuş (Ordu), and evaluation of the biological activities of species used as folk medicine

There have been about 10000 flowering and fern plant species naturally growing in Turkey. The traditional knowledge on plants and their uses has been disappearing in recent years because of urbanization. Therefore, any information about uses of the plant in our daily life should be recorded as soon as possible. For this reason, we decided to study in terms of ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal uses of the plants naturally growing in 35 villages of Akkuş District in this master of science thesis. Informations about the uses of the plants have been obtained from villagers using a questionnaire. The herbarium materials are saved in Ankara University Faculty of Pharmacy Herbarium. At the end of the identification of the plants collected from villages, 58 taxa belong to 32 families have been determined [Asteraceae (7), Amaranthaceae (1), Boraginaceae (1), Caprifoliaceae (1), Caryophyllaceae (3), Chenopodiaceae (1), Convolvulaceae (1), Cruciferae (1), Cornaceae (1), Euphorbiaceae (1), Ericaceae (1), Fabaceae (5), Fagaceae (3), Hypericaceae (1), Hypolepidaceae (1), Juglandaceae (1), Lamiaceae (6), Loranthaceae (1), Malvaceae (1), Papaveraceae (1), Pinaceae (1), Plantaginaceae (1), Platanaceae (1), Polygonaceae (4), Primulaceae (1), Rhamnaceae (1), Rosaceae (5), Scrophulariaceae (1), Tiliceae (1), Umbelliferae (1), Urticaceae (1), Vitaceae (1)]. In the result of tyrosinase enzyme activity studies carried out on the methanol extracts of the species used by villagers, the species with the highest tyrosinase enzyme inhibition and activator activity are C. byzantinum and P. rhoeas, respectively.