A Brief Ethnbotanical Survey of Some Medicinal Plants Used by the Kanjoo Community in Meru County, Kenya

Plants form an integral part of human life. They have been used from time immemorial by humans as medicines [1]. Ancient civilizations’ in the world thrived on use of plants for their livelihood [2]. In the recent past to date medicinal plants have generated lots of interest [3-5]. Several compounds currently in use as drugs or templates for synthesis of allopathic drugs have been derived from plants such as Vincristine, Vinblastine, Emetine, Quinine, Morphine, Codeine, and Artemisinin among others. There is need for new drugs to manage emerging and re-emerging diseases [6]. Currently microorganisms have a tendency of developing resistance to antibiotics in the market [7-9]. Large population in the world (80%) use traditional forms of treatment [10].


Introduction
Plants form an integral part of human life. They have been used from time immemorial by humans as medicines [1]. Ancient civilizations' in the world thrived on use of plants for their livelihood [2]. In the recent past to date medicinal plants have generated lots of interest [3][4][5]. Several compounds currently in use as drugs or templates for synthesis of allopathic drugs have been derived from plants such as Vincristine, Vinblastine, Emetine, Quinine, Morphine, Codeine, and Artemisinin among others. There is need for new drugs to manage emerging and re-emerging diseases [6]. Currently microorganisms have a tendency of developing resistance to antibiotics in the market [7][8][9]. Large population in the world (80%) use traditional forms of treatment [10].
The Ameru are indigenous inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa. They are Farmers and forest products users. The use of wild and cultivated plants in this part of Kenya is becoming increasingly visible in regard to medicine, food, material, social uses, construction and fuel. Although ethnobotanical studies have been conducted in many parts of Meru County [11,12] little has been done in the Kanjoo Community. Traditional practitioners are regularly consulted by the community as they have a rich indigenous knowledge base and are always available. There is limited documentation of the medicinal plants used by the Kanjoo people as well as their pharmacological and phytochemical properties. The fragile forest ecosystems are getting disseminated due to population pressure and accelerated reduction in the biodiversity in these areas. There is fear of loss of valuable information due to acculturation of the present generation. Ethnic cells in the African set-up in most may give a completely monolithic cultural distinction with gradual succession into the neighbors. The Meru is one such group which the Kanjoo may serve as a representative. The study was undertaken to explore the Ethno medicine of the Kanjoo people, specifically to

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A. Document some medicinal plants used in folklore medicine.

B.
Identify the plants; part used, pharmacological profile and non-medicinal uses.

Study area and data collection
The study was conducted amongst Kanjoo Community in Meru County, Kenya, which is located at 0°07' N latitude and 37°43' E longitude, about 80km from Meru town, 1600m above sea level. It has a population of about 9,806 people. The community live is next to the Meru national Reserve. They have a lot common with wildlife hence are used to live in harmony with nature. The area receives about 380-1000mm rainfall in two seasons. Vegetation varies from typical tropical savanna to grassland interspersed with shrubs and small trees. The nature of the environment therefore accommodates a diverse variety of flora and fauna.
Ethno botanical data was collected between January and February 2015. Thirty traditional healers, 13 males and 17 females were purposefully sampled and interviewed using semi structured questionnaires. The study focused on plant identification, disease(s) treated, plant part used, methods of preparation, route of administration and other uses of the plant. The collected specimens were prepared following standard herbarium procedures and identified using various floras [13,14]. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data.

Results and Discussion
Twenty eight plant species distributed in 26 genera and 22 families and encompassing four different life forms were identified as being useful for treating 17 human aliments ( Table  1). Most of the plants used in the area are well known and are indigenous to the area. The knowledge correlates with uses reported elsewhere, for example, the leaves of Ajuga integrifolia and Senna didymobotrya are used for the treatment of malaria in other parts of Kenya [15]. Furthermore, it confirms the fact that knowledge is uniformly spread rural societies. The dominant families of Ethnobotanical importance were: Asteraceae 4 species, Fabaceae 2 species and Lamiaceae 2 species. Other studies have recorded Asteraceae as being among the families with high number of medicinal species [16,17].    Trees and shrubs constituted the highest number of plant species recorded (10 species, 35.7%) each ( Figure 1). This demonstrates that they are the most commonly used plant habits in the study area. This could be linked to the high abundance of trees and shrubs in the area, making them easily accessible to the users [18]. Malaria and wounds were the commonly reported diseases (Table 2). Leaves were the most widely used plant part (14 species, 50%) followed by roots (7 species, 25%) ( Figure 2). These results are in agreement with Chandrakumar et al. [19] who reported leaves as the most commonly used plant part of the reported medicinal plant uses. However the results of this study differ with other findings which recorded roots as the commonly used plant part for treatment [17,20,21]. The preference of harvesting leaves and root bark for ethno medicine is a threat to the continued existence of the target plants. Leaves and roots perform vital functions on plants and therefore their frequent and unsustainable harvesting can lead to the extinction of the species [22].

Conclusion and Recommendations
The Kanjoo of the Ameru community have empirical knowledge about the use of medicinal plants, their ailments and Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology diseases they are used to manage. This confirms the universal understanding that the traditional forms in health provision still dominates the lives of human for survival all over the world particularly in developing countries. There is, however, very scanty documentation of the medicinal flora of the area. There is an urgent need to document these plants and the indigenous knowledge for future references. The scientific validation of the plant species may help in discovering new drugs to tackle new, reemerging and resistant pathogens. Not all the plants were covered in the study; more exhaustive documentation should be carried out to include them. It is also prudent that environmental education should be intensified for the harvesting techniques so that such plants whose roots are harvested for purposes of drugs are not exterminated but propagated in designated areas [24,25].