No consensus in “traditional” medicine - Medicinal plants and their uses in the markets of Bogotá (Colombia), La Paz/El Alto (Bolivia) and Trujillo/Chiclayo (Perú)

Abstract

Local markets are an important source of medicinal plants in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, and detailed information on larger markets in the countries has become available over the last decades. However, little comparative research reports on the pharmacopoeiae sold and the use-diversity between the markets of different countries. The present study provides a detailed comparison of medicinal plant markets in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, hypothesizing that the species composition, and medicinal applications, should show similarities, based in the common colonial roots of medicinal plant use in the region. In this study, we encountered that both species composition and uses of species did show much larger differences across the evaluated countries than expected. Even in case of introduced species, we did hardly find any coincidence between the markets of the three countries. This might be explained by the great differences in the origin of populations, the floristic diversity, and the very distinct plant use knowledge and preferences of migrant populations in the respective cities that are transferred to the markets through customer demand. Our study clearly indicated that studies in single markets cannot give an in-depth overview on the plant supply across related regions.