FLORA ÚTIL DEL ÁREA NATURAL PROTEGIDA SIERRA DEL LAUREL, AGUASCALIENTES, MÉXICO

Abstract

There is scarce information about how plants are used in rural communities within the Sierra del Laurel State Wild Area, Aguascalientes, Mexico. This work aims to know how plants are used in the area of interest through an ethnobotanical study, as well as to record general patterns of the species and their uses (botanical families, number of uses, growth habits) and use-value. Five rural communities located within the study area were visited to apply semi-structured interviews to local people. Plants mentioned by the interviewees were collected, identified, and deposited in the herbarium HUAA. We obtained information from 83 species, distributed in 37 families. The families with the highest number of useful species were Asteraceae, Solanaceae, and Fabaceae. Twelve use categories were recognized: aromatic, artisan, living fences, ceremonial, coloring, fuel, edible, construction, forage, insecticide, medicinal, and toxic; medicinal, edible, and toxic uses were the most common, in agreement with other ethnobotanical studies carried out in Mexico. The plants were grouped by their growth habits; herbaceous plants were the most used, followed by trees, and finally shrubs. The plants were grouped by their growth habits, management, and origin, being the herbaceous plants the most used by the interviewees, followed by the trees, and finally the shrubs; plant-collecting was the predominant form of management and native plants were the most widely used. The use value for each species was calculated to know its quantitative importance, where Litsea glaucescens (laurel), Opuntia ficus-indica (nopal), and Psidium guajava (guayaba) were the plants with the highest values.