The goal of this study was to conduct an ethnobotanical survey of the medicinal plants used by rural and urban communities in the town of Ouro Verde de Goiás, situated in the mato grosso goiano meso-region of the state of Goiás; to pinpoint species native to the Cerrado biome with potential for pharmacological studies based on corrected popular use concordance (CUPc); and to determine if ethnobotanical knowledge of medicinal plants from backyards differed by age, gender, education, place of birth and rural versus urban setting of the informant. Statistical tests applied were Kruskal-Wallis (H) and Qui-square (χ2). Eighty-four informants were selected by random sampling and interviews were structured. The available sources of medicinal plants were: backyards, disturbed areas, gallery forests and deciduous dry forests. Ninety-eight species, distributed in 45 botanical families, were found, with cultivated exotics outnumbering native plants. In backyards, 78 species were cultivated, of which 39.7% were cited exclusively as medicinal, the remaining also being reported as food (39.7%) or ornamentals (20.5%). Twenty species were gathered from the surrounding vegetation, all of which are native to the Cerrado biome, except for Senna occidentalis which is weedy. Two species that occur in deciduous dry forest (Forsteronia refracta and Celtis iguanaea) had high CUPc (> 50%), showing consensus of popular use. Forty-one percent of rural area informants reported gathering medicinal plants from native vegetation, which is significantly more than those in urban areas (16.7%). The number of species cited by informants with cultivated backyards was significantly greater than those that did not. The number of medicinal plants cited by informants and the presence of a backyard did not differ significantly among informants from different classes of gender, education, place of birth and rural versus urban dwelling.
ethnobotany; medicinal plants; local communities; backyard; native species
