Ethnobotanical Knowledge Studied in Pocharam Wildlife Sanctuary , Telangana , India

A survey was conducted in 31 fringe villages of Pocharam wildlife sanctuary, Telangana, India, during 2010 to 2012, in order to explore and document the ethnobotanical knowledge of Yerukulas and Lambadis communities. There was revealed the use of 173 Angiosperm species. The pattern of the plant use as per habitat (terrestrial/aquatic), habit (growth form), plant part (organ) and taxonomic category (families), nativity and occurrence (wild/cultivated) were established. Dicots contribute more than Monocots to the medicinal and ethnobotanical use. This might be due to the species strength in the region. When the plant use-data were analyzed, trees contributed with 68 uses, followed by herbs (51), climbers (32) and shrubs (22). Perhaps this was a reflection of the floristic composition and the prevailing Phanero-therophytic climate. Out of the 173 plant taxa that were noted as being utilized by the ethnic people in the sanctuary, the greatest number (154; 89.1%) were indigenous and wild. The introduced species were the crops under cultivation and planted. Although the local people use plants for various purposes, they largely serve medicinal scopes (83.24%) and for subsistence (21.96%).


Introduction
Eighty percent of the Indian population lives in villages and a considerable proportion of it comprises the tribal communities residing in remote forest areas.The traditions, beliefs, taboos and needs of the tribes vary with the floral diversity of the habitat that dearly contributes to plant-folklore.Obviously, the plants play a vital role in the maintenance of health besides providing food, fibre and shelter which are very basic to these people.
For Telangana region in southern India, Khan (1953) was perhaps the first to record the ethnobotanical uses of some plant species.Kapoor and Kapoor (1980), Hemadri (1990) and Naqvi (2001) enumerated the medicinal plant wealth of Karimnagar district.Ramarao (1988) visited Rangapur and Thupakulagudem hamlets and interacted with Koyas and Lambadis of Warangal district for his doctoral thesis on ethnobotany of Eastern Ghats, while Ravishankar (1990) studied the ethnobotany of Adilabad and Karimnagar districts.Pullaiah and Kumar (1996) and Kumar and Pullaiah (1998) enumerated the medicinal herbs in Mahabubnagar district.Reddy et al. (1998) documented the ethnoveterinary practices in Warangal district; they made 49 additions to the Dictionary of Ethnoveterinary Plants of India (cf.Appendix by Jain SK, 1999).Certain research articles were published on the traditional botanical knowledge of Gonds of Northern Telangana (Adilabad district: Ravishankar and Henry, 1992;Swamy, 2009;Omkar et al., 2011;Karimnagar district: Reddy et al., 2002).
The ethnobotany of Khammam district received fair attention.Upadhyay and Chauhan (2000) published a brief account of ethnobotany of Gundala mandal.Reddy et al. (2001) reported the ethnic medicinal uses of the endemic Heterostemma deccanense at Sukkumamidi.Reddy (2002) documented the ethnobotanical information for 550 plants from Warangal district.Reddy and Raju (2002) published the ethnobotanical observations on Konda Reddis of Mothugudem and Raju and Reddy (2005) reported the ethnomedicine for dysentery and diarrhoea.Reddy et al. (2007) published an account of the phytotherapy practiced by Gonds in Warangal district, while Murthy et al. (2007) made a brief report of the ethnoveterinary practices in vogue among the Koyas in Pakhal wildlife sanctuary.Recently, there were investigated the medicinal and economic uses of 204 climbing plants of 132 genera, 50 families of Magnoliophyta and two ferns of northern Telangana (Suthari et al., 2014a) and the varying traditional botanical knowledge of plant medicines of Koya community inhabiting in 16 villages of Eturnagaram wildlife sanctuary area (Suthari et al., 2014b).
For Southern Telangana, Padmarao et al. (1999) published a note on folk treatment of bone fractures in Ranga Reddy district and Reddy and Raju (2000) enlisted the folklore biomedicine for common veterinary diseases in Nalgonda district.Reddy et al. (2010) reported 82 medicinal plant species of ethnic use in Medak district without mentioning any tribe.Later, Sreeramulu et al. (2013) reviewed the ethno-botanical-medicinal aspects for common human ailments in Nalgonda and Warangal districts.
Conversely, there is no field-level baseline of ethnobotanical data published on Pocharam wildlife sanctuary.Therefore, an attempt was made to provide an inventory of the area.

Study area
The Pocharam Lake was built during 1916-1922 near Pocharam village by damming Allair, a tributary of Manjeera River.The Pocharam wildlife sanctuary (Fig. 1) was established in 1952 around this water body and lies in between the latitudes 18º6' to 18º18'N and longitudes 78º8' to 78º20'E.The sanctuary has two Reserve Forest blocks (dry deciduous type), namely Boothpur (1076.89ha) and Lingampet (11907.67ha).Presently, the wildlife sanctuary has a land area of 129.85 sq km spread in the districts of Medak (incl.Ramayampet) and Nizamabad (incl.Lingampet, Tadvai and Nizamabad).
A major portion of the sanctuary is of peninsular granite complex, basically of Archean formation.The soil varies from red to sandy loam.Heavy biotic pressure, indiscriminate felling/cutting of trees, uncontrolled grazing and annual forest fires are contributing to soil erosion and further depletion of soil nutrients.The soil has good forest growth only in valleys.In plains, the soil is compacted due to trampling.Very little percolation of water and run off occurs through this land soil surface (Anonymous, 2000).The area receives Southwest monsoon rains (June to September), with sporadic showers during Northeast monsoon season.The annual average rainfall in the sanctuary is 700 mm.During summer, the temperature rises up to 47 °C while it falls down to 10 °C in winter.

Tribes
The people inhabiting the study area are largely the Yerukalas and the Lambadis.Although both are of Scheduled-tribe category, the latter are non-endemic.Yerukalas are chiefly engaged in rearing pigs, making baskets and brooms.They live in small huts built with bamboo poles and grass roofs.Lambadis are economically better developed and politically alert in comparison to the local indigenous ethnic people such as Gonds, Koyas and others in Northern Telangana.Even though the sanctuary is proximate to Adilabad (Central India -the Gond Region), neither the Gonds nor the familiar Teak forests abound.There are 53 villages within the 5 km border of the sanctuary, with sparsely populated ethnic people.These villagers mainly depend on forest for timber, agricultural implements, fibre, fuel, fodder and other non-timber forest produce (NTFPs).Of the abiotic factors, forest fire is deliberate in the area for the collection of beedi (tendu) leaf and other NTFPs, like grass.

Materials and methods
The field trips to the study area were designed to cover the four seasons for three years (2010)(2011)(2012).Each field visit lasted 4-5 days.The ethnobotanical data were collected through Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which deals the interaction with the indigenous people and direct surveillance in the field (Chambers, 1994).A number of semi-structured interviews from the tribes Yerukalas and Lambadis were conducted in groups or with individuals who are usually above 40 years, with heads of families, house-wives, mid-wives, cattle and/or sheep owners and local vaidyas.The use of plants by the people of 31 villages of the sanctuary was documented (Saidulu, 2014).The information sought was about the uses of plants, e.g.hut construction, agriculture, food, medicine, ornaments, textiles, rituals etc.A total of 59 key-informants have been interviewed as follows: male 48 (81.36%) and female 11 (18.64%), of 30-70 years in five age groups such as 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79 and the percentage (%) of informants is 8.47 (5), 27.12 (16), 30.51 (18), 32.2 (19), 1.7 (01), respectively.The plant specimens with flower, fruit, tuber, rhizome etc. were collected to identify the species and to authenticate the ethnic claims.The voucher specimens of plants of use were collected, processed, labeled and incorporated into Kakatiya University Herbarium (KUW), Warangal (Saidulu, 2014).
Special attention was paid to solicit the field data relating to the habitat, habit, features of flower and fruit, economic/medicinal parts etc. of the plants used by the tribes.Information was documented for wild and cultivated species used by the two tribes in and around the sanctuary for nutrition, day-to-day living, human and ethnoveterinary medicine.

Prior Informed Content (PIC)
In compliance with CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity), PIC was consisted after relevant discussions by Kakatiya University Authority with the local tribal communities in Northern Telangana about the nature of use of their traditional knowledge.It is an understanding that any profit derived out of the research pursued after their medicinal plant knowledge shall belong to them (Suthari et al., 2014a, b).

Ethnobotany
The present study documented the uses of plants by the local ethnic tribes, the Yerukalas and Lambadis, who reside in 31 villages in and around the Pocharam wildlife sanctuary.Table 1 provides the scientific name followed by family, growth form, occurrence, plant part/s and the traditional use of each and every taxon documented.It was noted that Pocharam wildlife sanctuary was poor in regard to the ethnic diversity, forest   (Saidulu, 2014) in contrast to the Eturnagaram wildlife sanctuary in the neighbouring Warangal district, wherein more than 200 species are used only for medicinal use by Koya community alone (Suthari et al., 2014b).

Floristic/Taxonomic account
The survey of the sanctuary area resulted in 173 angiosperm (Magnoliophyta) species that are in use by the two ethnic communities.These species belong to 148 genera and 68 families as per the traditional system of classification of Takhtajan (1980) (Table 1).Of these, 57 families, 1 and 158 species are of Dicotyledonae (Magnoliopsida families, 15 genera and 15 species are of Monocotyledonae (Liliopsida).The ratio of Dicots and Monocots of ethnic use is 10.5:1 for species and 5.2:1 for families.Conversely, as realiz and recorded in other studies (Suthari et al., 2014b), the Dicots contribute more than Monocots to the medicinal and ethnobotanical use.This might be due to the species strength in the region.
When one looks at the use-contribution from the angiosperm families, Leguminosae (incl.12 of Mimosaceae, 10 of Papilionaceae and 04 of Caesalpiniaceae) tops the list, followed by Apocynaceae (incl.Asclepiadaceae as per APG III, 2009).The third position is occupied by Malvaceae ( Amaranthaceae, Anacardiaceae, Asteraceae, Cucurbitaceae, Euphorbiaceae and Lamiaceae with the same rank, and then by Phyllanthaceae (Table 2).However, Reddy Asclepiadaceae (5 species), Amaranthaceae and Caesalpiniaceae (4 species each) as the dominant families contributing to ethnomedicine by ethnic tribes in Medak district.Saidulu P et al. / Not Sci Biol, 2015, 7(2):164 -170 diversity, or its stakeholder botanical knowledge (Saidulu, 2014) e Eturnagaram wildlife sanctuary in the neighbouring district, wherein more than 200 species are used only for medicinal use by Koya community alone The survey of the sanctuary area resulted in data record of 173 angiosperm (Magnoliophyta) species that are in use by the two ethnic communities.These species belong to 148 genera and 68 families as per the traditional system of classification of Takhtajan (1980) (Table 1).Of these, 57 families, 133 genera Magnoliopsida) and 11 families, 15 genera and 15 species are of Monocotyledonae ).The ratio of Dicots and Monocots of ethnic use is 10.5:1 for species and 5.2:1 for families.Conversely, as realized et al., 2014b), the Dicots contribute more than Monocots to the medicinal and ethnobotanical use.This might be due to the species strength in contribution from the families, Leguminosae (incl.12 of Mimosaceae, 10 of Papilionaceae and 04 of Caesalpiniaceae) tops the list, followed by Apocynaceae (incl.Asclepiadaceae as per APG III, 2009).The third position is occupied by Malvaceae (s.l.), followed by Anacardiaceae, Asteraceae, Cucurbitaceae, Euphorbiaceae and Lamiaceae with the same rank, and then by Phyllanthaceae (Table 2).However, Reddy et al. (2010) found Asclepiadaceae (5 species), Amaranthaceae and Caesalpiniaceae nt families contributing to ethnomedicine by ethnic tribes in Medak district.

Plant growth forms
Plants are usually classified as trees, shrubs, climbers and herbs, as growth forms.When the plant use trees contributed with 68 uses, fol (32) and shrubs (22).Perhaps this was a reflection of the floristic composition and the prevailing (Raju et al., 2014), where the trees and annuals co disturbed tropical forest habitat.It can also be inferred that the ethnic people use the locally abundant vegetation (e.g.plant cover).Furthermore, in a habitat where trees are displaced, the preponderance of species increased from shrubs to herbs via climbers (Fig. 2).While the annu growth forms were available throughout the year for use.

Ethnoagriculture
The people of Pocharam wildlife sanctuary do not indulge in the usual practice of Podu (slash and burn) cultivation, since a large part of the land area is already under modern agriculture.However, they use the local minor wood for making agricultural implements, construction of huts, putting fences to homes and fields etc. Besides, it was noted that the local people no longer cultivate the traditional or indigenous varieties of grains.

Indigenous vs. Exotics
Out of the 173 plant taxa that were noted as being utilized by the ethnic people in the sanctuary, the greatest number (154; 89.1%) were indigenous and wild.The introduced species were the crops under cultivation and those planted (Table 1).The ratio of indigenous to exotics species of use was 12:1.As many as 154 indigenous taxa and 13 exotics (7.51%) are used besides the four species (Acacia nilotica, Aloe vera, Pongamia pinnata : There were 140 species used for human medicine, either as single drug or in combinations.There were four species of use as ethnoveterinary medicine; (b) Subsistence: Of the 173 flowering plant taxa, 27 were used as food and/or vegetables, and Constructs: Plants are used to find additional value by their creative skills, e.g.make boats, carts, cots, agricultural implements and other household things.There were making agricultural implements and five for house/hut construction (Table 1); (d) Commerce: For the economic subsistence, during the off-season or nonagricultural season, people gather plant parts (leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, bark, etc.) or extract through manipulation gums, resins and latex, in order to sell them to Girijan Cooperative Corporation Limited (GCC) or in the local candies.There were 12 such species of this category (Table 1).(e) Magic/ritualrooted beliefs in the ethnic communities.Four species are used to get cured of a disease and six species to banish evil spirits; and (f) Ornaments: There were only three species used as ornaments (Table 1).However, most of the plant species used by Yerukalas and Lambadis were of medicinal (83.24%) and subsistence (21.96%) value (Fig. 5).
The present study has yielded the baseline ethnobotanical data about a wildlife sanctuary in Northern Telangana after its six decades of standing, which is not in its prime and best care.Besides, loving Gonds are displaced or wanted.The study clearly revealed that the extant tropical dry deciduous forest is not climate under state protection.It is t Pocharam wildlife sanctuary is very poor in regard to the ethnic diversity, forest diversity, or its stakeholder botanical knowledge.Gathering the forest produce for commerce use, e.g. for household purposes, and ornaments.However, it was interesting to note that the NTFPs are still providing a succor to the local people.It is recommended that cummunities's participation is to be called for the protection of the existing vegetation in the sanctuary, and rsheds are to be developed wherever feasible, while allowing the stakeholders to gather some of the forest produce (NTFPs), to encourage and educate them for mutual benefits.Thereby, ecological sustainability (functional) of the sanctuary is promoted.
The authors thank Mr K. Sarveshar, Forest Range Officer, Pocharam, Telangana State Forest Department, for permission to stay in the forest guest house and enthusiastic support.The authors are obliged to all the informants of the study area for sharing their traditional botanical knowledge.The authors thank the Head, Department of Botany, Kakatiya University, Anonymous (2000).Notification of the Wildlife Sanctuary (Fascimile)ry.The Andhra Pradesh Gazetter, Part-Extraordinary, published by Authority, Hyderabad.APG III [The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group] ( 2009).An update of the Angiosperm phylogeny group classification for the orders and families .Botanical J Linn Soc 161:105-121.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.The study area-outline of Pocharam wildlife sanctuary (Source: Brochure published by Andhra Pradesh Forest Department, Hyderabad)

Table 1 .
Documentation of ethnobotanical plants from Pocharam wildlife sanctuary diversity, or its stakeholder botanical knowledge

Table 2 .
Five top-rank angiosperm families used in Pocharam wildlife sanctuary