Research Paper Relative importance of indigenous medicinal plants from Layyah district, Punjab Province, Pakistan Nadeem Ahmed a , Aqeel Mahmood b , Adeel Mahmood c , S.S. Tahir d , Asghari Bano a,n , Riffat Naseem Malik e , Seema Hassan f , Muhammad Ishtiaq g a Department of Plant Sciences, Quiad-I-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan b Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan c Environmental Biology Laboratory, Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan d Pakistan Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, H-9, Islamabad, Pakistan e Environmental Biology and Ecotoxicology Laboratory, Department of Environmental Sciences, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan f Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan g Department of Botany, Mirpur University of Science & Technology (MUST) Bhimber Campus, Bhimber Azad Kashmir, Pakistan article info Article history: Received 11 March 2014 Received in revised form 24 May 2014 Accepted 26 May 2014 Keywords: Layyah Punjab Ethnomedicines Use value Pakistan abstract Ethnopharmacological relevance: Ethnomedicinal reports are important for the discovery of new crude drugs from reported medicinal plants with high use value. The current study aimed to document the medicinal flora as well as medicinal knowledge of indigenous plants of local communities from Layyah district, Punjab Province, Pakistan. Material and methods: Rapid appraisal approach (RAA), semi-structured interviews, group meetings with herbalists, landowners and local people having awareness about the medicinal action of plants were employed to collect the data. Use values (UV) and frequency of citation (FC) were calculated to check the relative importance of plants. Results and discussions: The current ethnomedicinal study reported 125 medicinal plant species diversified from 106 genus belonging to the 43 different families and Poaceae was the predominant family over others with 16 reported medicinal plants. Wild herbaceous plants were the predominant over other life forms while among plant parts, leaves contributed 32% followed by the stem (27%), fruit and flowers (15%). Allium sativum exhibited the highest use vale (UV) 0.92 while the lowest UV was exhibited by Lasiurus scindicus which was 0.15. Conclusion: Local communities of district Layyah still have a strong faith on herbal medicines for basic healthcare needs. Indigenous plants having high UV and FC should be subjected to the detailed phytochemical investigations to explore new natural drugs. & 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Medicinal plants, since times immemorial, have been used practically in all cultures as a source of medicine (Malik et al., 2005). Pakistan is rich in diversity of medicinal and aromatic plants due to its unique phytogeography with diverse climatic conditions. About 400–600 medicinal plant species out of 5700 are estimated to found in Pakistan. In the early 1950s, about 84% of population was dependent on traditional medicines for their basic healthcare needs (Hocking,1958; Mahmood et al., 2011a) but now this practice is limited only in the remote areas due to the urbanization and modernization (Ibrar et al., 2007). Ethnomedicinal studies are significant for the discovery of new drugs from indigenous medicinal plants. Right from the com- mencement of ethnobotany, with special emphasis on the doc- umentation of traditional medicinal knowledge of plants, has discovered a number of modern drugs (Cox, 2000; Gilani and Atta-ur-Rahman, 2005). At present, about 25% drugs included in the modern pharmacopeia are plant derived and many others are synthetic analogs built on proto-type compounds isolated from plants (WHO, 2002; Mahmood et al., 2013a, 2013b). Revival of awareness in traditional health practice all over the world has diverted the attention of scientists towards the ethnomedicines and the use of herbal remedies in current scenario. In Pakistan, attention has been paid to the field of ethnobotany (Gilani and Atta-ur-Rahman, 2005; Qureshi et al., 2006, 2009; Ahmad and Husain, 2008; Husain et al., 2008; Mahmood et al., 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2011d, 2012, 2013a, 2013b) and few reports Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jep Journal of Ethnopharmacology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2014.05.052 0378-8741/& 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ92 51 90643096. E-mail address: banoasghari@gmail.com (A. Bano). Please cite this article as: Ahmed, N., et al., Relative importance of indigenous medicinal plants from Layyah district, Punjab Province, Pakistan. Journal of Ethnopharmacology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2014.05.052i Journal of Ethnopharmacology ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎