Ethanobotany : Interaction of peoples and plants Blog | UCBMSH – Life Science Degree courses college in Dehradun( Doon ) , Uttarakhand , India .

Plants are alive just like human being and animals, they grow and die, they need energy, nutrients, air , water, they produce young ones, they are made up of cells and reacts to what’s around them. The flora of India is one of the richest of the world due to a wide range of climate, topology and environments in the country. Due to the wide range of climatic conditions, India holds reach variety of flora that no other country can boast off. Plants includes all land plants: mosses, ferns, conifers, flowering plants and so on. There were a wide variety of shapes and sizes of plants around, including tiny creeping plants and tall forest trees. The important contribution of plants is their shaping of the environment. In hilly regions of India several plants are used ethno botanically for different purposes such as food, dyes, fibers, gums, latex, oils, resins, tannins and waxes. Throughout time, countless peoples have tested and recorded the usefulness of plants. Those plants with beneficial uses were kept and utilized. Our cultures evolved by passing from generation to generation ever more sophisticated knowledge of plants and their usefulness. Even today, we depend upon plants and their important pollinators for our existence and survival. Ethnobotany (from ethnology, study of culture, and botany, study of plants) is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between peoples and plants. This includes use for food, clothing, currency, ritual, medicine, dye, construction, cosmetics and a lot more. Although the value of ethnomedicine has been realized; work is being done on psychoactive plants, household remedies and plants sold by street drug vendors. Today, it remains a rapidly growing field of research, gaining professional, student and public interest both.