Ethnobotanical Importance of Wild Plants in Wadi Kaam, Northwestern Libya

Abstract

This paper compares four indices; each index is designed to assess the cultural significance of plant species through the study of the goods provided by wild plants in the study area and the assessment of the Cultural Importance (CI) index, which reflects the cultural importance of wild plant usage. The results show that 94 species have a useful use (63.8% for medicinal use, 60.6% for beekeeping, 43.6% for fodder plants, 27.7% for human food, 8.5% as fuel and 2.1% in hand-made industries). The total CI of each category indicated that plants used in beekeeping are the most common among inhabitants (9.54), followed by medicinal use (9.46), and grazing (7.77), while hand-made was the least (0.27). Ziziphus lotus (total CI=1.22) had first rank in cultural using the four quantitative indices; CI, the relative frequency of citation (RFC), relative importance (RI) and cultural value (CV); with five number of uses (NU), 82 number of use reports (UR) and 41 frequency of citation (FC). There is a positive and significant relationship between the NU and FC (r = 0.876). At the same time, CI is significantly highly correlated with FC (r= 0.975), and CV was the most correlated with FC (r= 0.98). Despite the controversy surrounding the use of cultural significance indices, authors believe that indices based on interviews are the only way to fill passive knowledge about valuable plants. It is crucial to study the inhabitant's cultural uses of wild plants, to reflect their economic importance and the importance to be conservation.