Abstract:
With the long term objective of conserving medicinal plants, a survey was carried out in three
selected District Secretariat Divisions in the Ampara District of Sri Lanka. All the 45 registered
herbal practitioners were interviewed by administering a questionnaire to inventor the medicinal
plants used, methods of obtaining and to identify any important sites of medicinal plants in the
area. Eighty percent of them are general practitioners and 84% of them provide their own
formulations. Only 50% of them cultivate at least part of their requirement and the major problem
is lack of land or water or both and also lack of knowledge of propagation. Seventy five percent
obtain at least part of their plant requirements from wild mostly from open lands and small forest
patches in the vicinity and very few from protected areas in and around the district. Plants were
identified using literature since none of the doctors provided specimens for systematic
identification. Out of the 239 vernacular names provided 34 were not found in any of the literature
used for identification,19 were synonyms and 186 species belonging to 68 families were identified.
The plant needs of the practitioners are very specific i.e. 70 species had a single user (not the same
person) and 28 species only 2 users, indicating the use of different plant species for same treatment
by different practitioners. Urbanization, overexploitation and cattle grazing could be possible
threats on plant availability in the surrounding environments. Measures to provide their plant
requirements would prevent them from exploiting natural habitats in future
