Ethnomedical survey of plants used by the Bateq in Kuala Koh, Kelantan, Malaysia.

Plants and environment play important roles in Bateq culture. They possessed a high level of knowledge related to forests based on their intimacy with the forests and their heavy dependents on forests for their daily lives. The indigenous knowledge among Bateq was inherited from generation to generation through verbal communication passed from the eldest, but none of this knowledge has been regarded as important, neither has it been documented systematically. An ethnobotanical survey was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire method to obtain information on the use of medicinal plants for traditional healthcare among Bateq in a designated study area located in Kuala Koh, Kelantan. The objective of this study is to identify and document the traditional uses and remedies of various medicinal plants, which commonly used among Bateq and to identify the plant part, the modes of preparation and routes of administration used for medication of each medicinal plant. In this study 50 medicinal plant species from 35 families were used as traditional health care were recorded. Leaves were the most frequently used plant's part (42%). Fifty percent of medications were prepared as decoctions and preparations are mostly administered orally. This study provides the first ethnobotanical study on medicinal plants used among Bateq in Kuala Koh. Future studies towards conserving the reported species and administration of traditional herbal medicine are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]