Ethnobotanical Study of the Representative Native Flora Species of the Province of Imbabura

Abstract

This research was conducted in order to know the ethnobotanical uses of wild lora of Imbabura, for which plant species were collected in 4 environmentally important areas of the province, corresponding to: Ceja Andina located between 2000 and 4000 m, dry forest Andino 1400 and 2000 m Moor between 2800 and 4800 m. and tropical moist forest bet- ween 0 to 1500 m. The province of Imbabura has a great diversity of plant species, due to the different altitude and climatic variety. Different uses were recorded for each plant species collected, ranging from human to human consumption, animal feed, fuel, cultural, toxic, medicinal and materials used in construction. The ethnobotanical uses information and taxonomic classiication of plant species were entered into a software designed to record and store in a database all this information accessible to other similar investigations. This research results generated as botany software which can record the technical details of each plant species. Currently registered information of the species identiied in each ield trip, but you can continue registering other similar information. It also processed the collected botanical specimens to establish a herbal PUCE-SI constitutes a tangible source of information for the study of lora of Ecuador.