Malnad, a part of western ghats of Indian is richly credited with varied kind of vegetation and unimaginable topographical features. Lot of families use naturally available plants in the surroundings as cures for many diseases. Many of the plants and their uses is still to be unearthed as it is so far limited to traditional usage.

Glossary of major medicinal plants available in Western ghats, India

Malnad, a part of western ghats of Indian is richly credited with varied kind of vegetation and unimaginable topographical features. Lot of families use naturally available plants in the surroundings as cures for many diseases. Many of the plants and their uses is still to be unearthed as it is so far limited to traditional usage.

The article tries to focus on the importance of the native medicinal plants. Out of the large variety of species available in the Western Ghats, about 50 species hold a very high value in the folk and herbal health forms for the treatment of different forms of ailments. The most common plants like the Mimosa pudica, Hibiscus angulosus, Leucas aspera, Phyllanthus neruri, Calotropis gigantea, Tridax procumbens, Parthenium hysterophorus (which is considered to be a noxoious weed) are all found to have cure for many major ailments like jaundice, asthma, piles, bronchial and blood disorders.

Defininition of a Medicinal plant:

Plants that are recognized by people to have reliable and effective medicinal values, arecommonly used in treating and preventing specific ailments and diseases, and play anessential role in health care.

Importance of medicinal plants:

• Medicinal plants are used at the household level by women to improve the health of the family members.
• At the village level by medicine men or tribals
• By the practitioners of classical traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, or the Japanese Kampo system.
• Medicinal plants are gaining importance in the fields of research, especially in the field of genetics and biotechnology.

Deforestation - Killing the plant diversity in westernghats:

The plant diversity in the Western Ghats is under threat of degeneration due to widespread deforestation. The area covering Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Kodagu, Chikmagalur, Hassan, and Shimoga districts is one of the major plant diversity regions in the world. Thanks to the timber lobbies, this region is fast losing its plant diversity.

The Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalayas are two of the 25 hot spots of plant diversity in the world. Concern expressed by botanists and experts indicate that if the region is allowed to degenerate any further, several endemic species, including medicinal herbs and plants, will vanish.

The danger to the medicinal plants appeared to be grave as the Western Ghats were a treasurehouse of over 8,000 ethnic and endemic varieties belonging to 386 botanical families. This accounted for one-fourth of the world's medicinal plants (30,000) used in different medicinal systems, according to the all-India Co-ordinated Ethnobiological Research Project. The project observed that southern Western Ghats had most of these species in them.

The list of medicinal plants of western ghat can be found here