Cultural Importance Indices of the Endemic Plants in Egypt

Abstract

ETHNOBOTANY has improved dramatically in recent decades and become a widely recognized scientific discipline after the usage of mathematical methods. Cultural importance index (CI) is considered a tool for evaluating the use-value (UV) of plants. It become an essential quantitative method in many ethnobotanical studies. The present study evaluates the cultural significance of different Egyptian endemics using four indices (UR: number of use reports, RFC: relative frequency of citation, RI: relative importance and CV: cultural value) depend on informant report. Each index intends to evaluate the CI of plant taxa and its statistical analysis. Ethnobotanical information was collected from summer 2018 to Spring 2020 through monthly visits to the study area. CI was applied on 41 endemic plants recorded in the Egyptian flora. Medicinal species were the most represented group (40 taxa), then grazing (25), and human food (14). Ranking of CI index according to the contribution of each species indicating that Rosa arabica was the first-ranking (6 out of 9 groups), followed by Origanum syriacum subsp. sinaicum (5 groups) and Sonchus macrocarpus (3 groups). High positive linear correlation was detected between CI-RFC (0.96), CI-RI and CI-CV (0.98); while weak correlation between number of uses (NU) and RFC (0.47) at P<0.05 (n=41).