On the traditional medicinal plants and plant derived natural drugs used by indigenous people of Nagaland, India

An ethnobotanical documentation on the medicinal plants used by local people of Nagaland, (North-east India) has been presented here. The study explored 33 plant species (with their local names, indigenous applications, sources/origins, parts of plants used, bioactive compounds present, process of preparing medicines from the plants) belonging to 28 families have been reviewed thoroughly. Some examples are, Catharanthus roseus (Tsuinrinaro, Periwinkle), Acacia pennata (Chakrangaing, Ballikhadira), Adhatoda vasica (Kicharangnaro, Malabar-nut), Ageratum conzyoides (Imchenriza, Billy-goat-weed, /Tropical-white-weed), Alstonia scholaris (Lazarongpang, Blackboard), Rauvolfia serpentina (Per-mozutong, Indian-snakeroot) etc. Plant based drugs are very popular and effective in Nagaland from ancient times but thorough-documentation with scientific-background of effectiveness, active chemical-compounds present, their action-mechanism etc. are still scanty. Such review can be of useful for pharmacologist, phyto-chemists to a broad group of researchers and may lead to discovery of new sources of novel medicines through traditional therapeutic knowledge.