Plantas medicinais : cultivo em quintais pela população de um município do semiárido piauiense, nordeste do Brasil

Abstract

The use of medicinal plants cultivated in backyards is an applicant practice among peoples across the planet by socioeconomic or cultural issues in rural and urban areas. The importance of backyards is evident, facilitating the anthropogenic actions and conditioning the maintenance of these plant resources in drought. The study aim was to get information about cultivation and use of medicinal plants in backyards, at São Julião city in semi-arid of Piauí state, Brazil. The study has a quali-quantitative approach with descriptive character and was conducted between February and May 2013, was been considered the informed consent for research, with 100 semi-structured interviews applied and households randomly selected. Was recorded the use and cultivation of eight species, distributed in 06 families, being the Lamiaceae (03) family of higher occurrence. Cultivation in backyards occurred in 24% of the citations, and the use of these in 91.67%. The most used part of the plants was the leaf 83.33%, and the infusion was the method of preparation most common 79.17%. Based on the exposed, the small number of medicinal plants cultivated in backyards leads to questions and contradictions with cultural and ethical character, needing more studies to understand the abandonment of these practices.