244 2020 Journal of Plant Resources Vol.18, No. 1 Ethnobotanical Knowledge of the Tharu Community Living in Tulsipur Sub-metropolitan City, Dang, Nepal Bishal Subedi 1 * and Ram Sharan Dani 2 1 Department of Botany, Amrit Campus, Thamel, Kathmandu 2 Department of Botany, Trichandra Campus, Jamal, Kathmandu *E-mail: bishalsubedi143@gmail.com Abstract An ethnobotanical work was conducted in Tulsipur sub metropolitan city of Dang District, Rapti, Nepal. The main objective was to document the indigenous knowledge of the Tharu community in utilization of plant for various purposes. Ethnobotanical survey was made by direct field visit, herbarium collection and identification was done with the help of national and international literatures. The Tharus of Tulsipur Municipality were found to have diversified knowledge in utilization of plant resources in 8 different forms. From the study area, 114 species belonging 96 genera of 44 families that were utilized for various purposes were documented. Among the taxa, Poaceae and Leguminosae have more species (12 species each). Among the reported plant species, 55 species were food plant, 33 medicinal plant, 14 fodder plant, 11 used for cultural purposes, 11 for making utensil, 7 were wild vegetable plant, 7 were firewood plant and 7 were timber plant. From the research 18 plants were found to have multiple uses. The Tharus of the study area were found to have good knowledge on food plants followed by medicinal plants. Keywords: Ethnobotany, Fodder plants, Food plants, Medicinal plants, Wild vegetable Introduction Nepal has a rich and varied flora due to its diversified topography and variable climatic conditions. The physical setup of the country comprises altitudinal gradient ranges from tropical region to alpine region. About 44.7% of the country’s area is covered by forest (Government of Nepal [GoN], 2017). From the ancient period man lives closely associated with nature and are depended on it for their survival. Many living groups of people, having diversified ethnic history of rituals and performance, who are more of less isolated form modem world and are closely associated with their ambient vegetation is the emporia of ethno botanical research (Pal & Jain, 1998). The surrounding environment directly and indirectly influences the human life and culture. The interaction between plant and people is as long as human being existence in this planet (Shah et al., 2015). Plants are the part of our environment. People uses plants around them for many proposes like; food, shelter, dyes, cosmetics, clothing, medicine etc. from their surrounding vegetation. They gathered the knowledge from the environment, use them and pass them through generation to generation with or without written documents. But many have disappeared due to several reasons. Without proper documentation, these resourceful of information or knowledge may be disappeared for ever. So a recent branch of botany, ethnobotany arise which provide the proper documentation and preservation system of traditional plant use information, accumulated in a community through generation by generation in relation with their culture. Ethnobotany is a term used to encompass studies to describe local people’s interaction with the natural surroundings (Eldeen et al., 2016). Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between peoples and plants. Mother tongue statistics of Nepalese people represent 100 different ethnic groups and more than 100 languages are spoken in Nepal, among which Tharu is one (Central Bureau of Statistics[CBS], 2011). Traditionally, ethnic groups are known to use large number of wild plants for various purposes like medicine, food, fodder, fuel, culture, etc (Mishra & Mishra, 2014). Many people have done ethnobotanical works in J. Pl. Res. Vol. 18, No. 1, pp 244-251, 2020