Comparativo-the trade of wild medicinal plants in the andean district of lircay, huancavelica, perú: A comparative study

Abstract

Introduction: Plants sold in public markets are important for the use and economic benefit they generate. This study documents the trade of wild medicinal plants in the district of Lircay, in the southern region of Peru. Additionally, the composition of the wild medicinal species registered in the study is compared with the richness of wild species reported in three markets in the region. Methods: The methodology was based on interviews with 70 vendors between 2015 and 2018. To compare the richness of species between markets, the data was conditioned in a matrix of presence and absence with which the Jaccard similarity index was calculated. Results and Discussion: Seventy-two wild medicinal plants were commercialized for 14 subcategories of medicinal use. The most frequently sold species were Clinopodium brevicalyx, Peperomia galioides and Minthostachys andina. It was also observed that the trade may be influencing the conservation status of Haplorhus peruviana and Ephedra rupestris, both taxa categorized as Critically Endangered according to Peruvian legislation. The problem of species replacement between Equisetum bogotense, Ephedra rupestris and Baccharis genistelloides, which are marketed under the name of "horsetail", is reported. Similarly, Perezia pinnatifida is sold under the common name of "valeriana" and is attributed the properties for the genus Valeriana. Those last observations suggest that an adequate taxonomic identification of the plants sold in public markets is necessary, specially, because of the antagonistic effects that could have different active ingredient of those species. Finally, when comparing the plants sold in Lircay with three other Andean markets (Ancash, Ayacucho and Huancavelica), a low similarity was found, which suggests a high variability of the commercialized plants and the need of more studies to know the total amount of species used for medicinal purposes in this region. Conclusions: The similarity of wild medicinal plants between the Andean markets of Cajamarca, Ancash, Ayacucho and Huancavelica is low.