International Journal of Academic Research and Development

Authors
Dr. Preeti Kulshrestha

Abstract
The home and kitchen gardens in rural areas serve as an important source of traditional medicinal plants for day to day treatment of certain common diseases. Several species of plants such as tulsi, neem, dhatura, akh, onion, garlic, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, papaya, guava, mango, lemon, drumsticks, etc. are found growing very commonly in these gardens. The knowledge about the medicinal uses of these plants is nowadays limited to only a few people among these communities and it is diminishing day by day. Also due to environmental pollution, increasing population growth and over demand of medicinal plants without knowledge of conservation many of the medicinal plants are under threat. Thus there is need to preserve this traditional knowledge which may be a basis for biodiversity conservation. The present paper deals with the study of ethno botanical knowledge of people in rural communities in Gwalior district of Madhya Pradesh. A total number of 26 plant species from 22familes were found to have ethno botanical importance.