Copyright © 2014, American-Eurasian Network for Scientific Information publisher American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture ISSN: 1995-0748 JOURNAL home page: http://www.aensiweb.com/AEJSA 2014 June; 8(9): pages 75-82. Published Online 20 August 2014. Research Article Corresponding Author: Dr. Mohammed Rahmatullah, Pro-Vice Chancellor University of Development Alternative House No. 78, Road No. 11A (new) Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1209 Bangladesh Phone: 88-01715032621; Fax: 88-02-8157339; E-mail: rahamatm@hotmail.com Folkloric knowledge of medicinal plants: an account of eight folk herbalists in Comilla district, Bangladesh Simtia Afrin Eva, Tamanna Islam Mouri, Shahnaj Akter Sheela, Mashiwat Noshine, Faria Sultana, Taskina Rahman, Mahjabin Marzia, Protiva Rani Das, Md Tabibul Islam, Mohammed Rahmatullah Department of Pharmacy, University of Development Alternative, Dhanmondi, Dhaka-1209, Bangladesh Received: 25 June 2014; Received: 8 July 2014; Accepted: 25 July 2014; Available online: 20 August 2014 © 2014 AENSI PUBLISHER All rights reserved ABSTRACT Besides regular folk medicinal practitioners, folk medicine is also practiced by elderly people and rural women, who through practical experiences or anecdotal evidences have gathered knowledge on medicinal plants. Usually the knowledge is limited to a few plants and treatment of a few diseases. The objective of this survey was to document the medicinal practices of eight such folk herbalists (FH) practicing in various villages of Comilla district in Bangladesh. Five of the folk herbalists were women and three males. In between them, the herbalists were observed to use a total of 22 plants. It was further observed that the folk herbalists differed in the type of diseases treated and the medicinal plants and formulations used. Our study highlights the necessity of conducting surveys among such folk herbalists or part-time traditional medicinal practitioners to obtain a comprehensive view of medicinal plants used in Bangladesh. Key words: Phytomedicine, Comilla, medicinal plants, Bangladesh INTRODUCTION Traditional medicine in Bangladesh comes in many varieties with some well-defined systems like Ayurveda, Unani, and homeopathy with their own colleges of medicine and accepted formularies as well as folk medicinal practitioners and tribal medicinal practitioners. The latter two practice a system in which knowledge is more or less individualistic and is passed on from generation to generation within the family or to a tight group of apprentices. Other than these systems, folk medicine is also practiced in the form of home remedies and by part-time folk herbalists (FH), who are usually elderly men or women who have picked up scattered knowledge on medicinal plants either through practical experiences or through anecdotal evidences. Practically nothing has been reported on the medicinal plants used by the FHs. Yet considering the number of FHs in the country, as can be observed by simple visits to rural areas, this is an area which needs appropriate documentation, for significant amount of knowledge can be obtained through proper observation and documentation of their practices. Towards a thorough documentation of the medicinal plants of Bangladesh, we had been conducting extensive surveys among all sorts of traditional medicinal practitioners for a number of years [30,32-34,8,13,15,25,26,35-43,1,5- 7,12,17,18,19,44,45,53,55,9,14,16,20,46- 49,54,2,28,50,51]. However, documentation of part- time folk medicinal practitioners or folk herbalists has been largely neglected in our studies. As such, the objective of the present study was to conduct a survey among such FHs in rural areas of one district of Bangladesh, namely Comilla. Materials and Methods The present study was conducted among eight FHs, all of whom practiced in villages of Comilla