1. Introduction

Medicinal plants have been under the constant vigilance of botanists and ethno-botanists to analyze its germplasm for pharmaceutical purposes as a remedy of different common diseases under different environmental regimes throughout the world. It is a never ending process and botanists have to continue their effort constantly to revel actual ingredients and the usefulness of medicinal flora to mankind on global basis. They have a strong linkage with human health. Not only, the old ayurvedic and unani system of medicinal treatment depend on herbal drugs but the other systems including allopathic and homeopathic directly or indirectly depend upon the herbal drug plants for the preparation of certain synthetic drugs ^{[6, 8]}. The World Health Organization, it is estimated that 80 percent of the population of developing countries relies on traditional plant based medicines for their health requirements ^[59].

Medicinal and aromatic plants constitute a major segment of the flora, which provides raw materials for use in the pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and drug industries. There are many medicinally valued plant resources, which provide various kinds of drugs and medicines for various ailments in Bangladesh. Several medicinal plants and ethno-botanical studies in Bangladesh have been carried out. Alam ^[2] documented the ethno-botanical information and medicinal plant use by Marma. Several work also done by [4,17-66] and ^[7]. The aim of the present study was to first record of medicinal plants used by the local people living in Mahadebpur Upazila of Naogaon district, Bangladesh.

2. Materials and Methods

Study area: Mahadebpur is an upazila of Naogaon District in the Division of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Mahadebpur is located at 24.918890ºN 88.748455ºE. It has 46642 units of house hold and total area 397.67km² and its bounded by Patnitala on the north, Manda and Naogaon Sadar upazilas on the south, Badalgachi and Naogaon Sadar upazilas on the east and Niamatpur and Porsha upazila on the west. Main rivers are Atrai, Chatra Beel and Bachnakharie noted. The climate of Mahadebpur upazila is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild winters and rainfall. The summer season commerce early in the March with the cessation of the Northerly wind. The winter season (November-January) which is cool and little rainfall; summer season (June-October) which is warm and no rainfall. In terms of temperature variation it appears that average annual temperature is about 26-36. The maximum monthly temperature can reach up to 40.1 during May and minimum monthly temperature 9°C during January. Relative humidity percentage ranged from 55.69% with annual average of 78.89% ^[5].

Methods of the study: Inventory of medicinal plants at Mahadebpur Upazila of Naogaon District, Bangladesh was carried out from December 2013 to June 2015. A total of 159 medicinal plant species belonging to 135 genera and 69 families were collected and identified. A total of 156 local people having an age rage 18-75 years were interviewed using semi-structured interviewed method ^[3]. Professionally they were peasant, day labor, farmer, betel leaf cultivators, house wives, medicine men, small shop keepers etc. Among them 76 were female and rest 80 were male. Regular field studies were made in the study area during the period. The information about the plants used for various diseases was gathered through interviews and discussion with the elderly people, medicine men and traditional medical practitioners were also consulted.

Identification: The plant specimens were identified by consulting different Floras and literatures, viz, ^{[1, 10, 13, 15]}, and by comparing with the herbarium specimens available at the Herbarium, Department of Botany, Rajshahi University. For updated nomenclature of the species ^{[1, 11]} and ^[14]. Voucher specimens are deposited in the Herbarium, Department of Botany, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh.

3. Results and Discussion

The important medicinal plants at Mahadebpur upazila of Naogaon district were carried out. A total of 159 medicinal plant species belonging to 135 genera and 69 families were collected and recorded for their use in 152 ailments. Most of the local people in the study area are poor are illiterate. In one hand, these people are out of the reach of modern medicines and on other hand, the market price of most available medicines are very expensive. As a result, these medicinal plants are used by them to cure following the diseases, especially for abscess, asthma, abortion, cough, cold, small pox, constipation, dysentery, diarrhea, diabetes, eczema, fever, and fracture of bone, headache, heart disease, itches, jaundice, menstrual disease, paralysis, piles, skin diseases, snake-bite, toothache, vomiting, worm, wound and others (Table 1). Habit analysis shows that herbs, shrubs, climbers and trees are represented by 43.77%, 18.11%, 11.32% and 26.79% species, respectively (Figure 1). Different plant parts of different spp. are used as medicine for treating various diseases Leaves of 26.27%, fruit of 18.56%, whole plant of 17.4%, root of 10.28%, bark of 9.03%, seed of 4.77%, stem of 3.4%, flower of 3.45%, rhizome of 2.11%, Petiole of 1.3% and others of 3.43% species were used as medicine (Table 1, Figure 2). For each species scientific name, local name, family, medicinal use and part(s) used are provided. The collected medicinal information of those plant species is in agreement with the result of other studies done in Bangladesh ^{[4, 7, 9, 12, 64, 65, 66]}. The study also suggested that the present information on medicinal use of plants by the local people may be used for botanical and pharmacological research in future for the discovery of new sources of drugs. All these plants need to be evaluated through phyto and pharmacochemical investigations to discover their potentiality and may help in developing effective drugs for human health care.

Table 1. List of medicinal plants and their use in different ailments by the local people at Mahadebpur Upazila of Naogaon District, Bangladesh

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Figure 1. Habit diversity of the recorded species

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Figure 2. Number of Plant parts used for medicinal purpose

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the local people of Mahadebpur Upazila, Naogaon for their co-operation and help during the research work.

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