Ethnomedicinal Plant Utilization in Rural Northern Punjab, Pakistan: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

Plants have long been utilized as traditional medicine by the inhabitants of Northern Punjab, Pakistan. However, this local knowledge has not been well documented. Data were collected from 150 informants, of whom 66.67% were women. To record ethnomedicinal data from indigenous people, ethnobotanical data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires and interviews with indigenous people. The significance of species was quantified by Use Value (UV), Frequency of Citation (FC), Informant Consensus Factor (ICF), Jaccard Index (JI), and Fidelity Level (FL) indices. A total of 90 ethnobotanical important plant species belonging to 40 plant families were recorded in this area. Fabaceae and Poaceae are the most commonly used plant families, with seven species. People use these plants primarily in the form of juice (21.95%). TheUV) ranged from 0.01-0.97. A high UV of 0.97 was found for Aloe vera (L.) Burm. The relative (RFC) ranged from 0.02-0.89 for different species, showing Mentha longifolia, Aloe vera, Trachyspermum ammi, Azadirachta indica A. Juss, Foeniculum vulgare, and Vachellia nilotica (Acacia nilotica) as useful species with RFC value above 0.8. Medicinal plants' l (FL) ranged from 11.11% to 100%. (ICF) ranged from 0.57 to 0.96. The highest ICF value (0.96) was recorded with 34 plant species for digestive diseases. The (JI) was calculated to compare our results with previous published studies and ranged from 1.96 to 54.39. Our analysis concludes that the locals of this area still prioritize medicinal plants to cure their diseases. It may contribute significantly to the reservoir of information already available in the field of ethnomedicine.