Studies on pharmaceutical ethnobotany in the region of Turkmen Sahra, north of Iran (Part 1): general results.

This paper is the result of ethnobotanical survey on the Turkmens of Golestan and Khorasan Province (Iran) conducted from June 2002 to the end of 2003. Turkmens are traditionally an isolated ethnic group residing in northern parts of Iran. We studied the folk herbal medicine among Turkmens of Iran. Totally, 136 species from 51 families were documented from which 120 species used as medicinal and 84 species mentioned by three or more informants. Information about plant uses is all summarized in Table 1. Some interesting and endemic species have been reported for medicinal uses, also some new uses for common species were documented. Some of these species are good targets for further analysis.