Ethnomedicinal knowledge among the Malayali tribal of Chitteri hills, Eastern Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India

Traditional knowledge of taxonomy is developed from a basic human tendency to recognize plants that are imposed by nature. It is developed from the unique history and culturally defined beliefs, behaviors and preferences of particular traditional societies rooted in a clearly defined geographical area and transmit their knowledge to their offspring’s. The universal identification of plants had been ubiquitous since the evolution of systematic botany. Evolution of taxonomy triggered botanists, to explore variety of plant species universally on their biological properties and evolved into the present modern ethnobotany, which emphasize on their, growth pattern and chemical compositions in traditional communities need. With the passage of time, they have developed a great deal of knowledge on the use of plants and plant products. The tribal have their own scientific knowledge of technology and they are still considered to be primitive and traditional bounded. The knowledge is very dynamic and is strongly influenced by indigenous creativity, innovation, rooted in geographical and cultural cognition. The knowledge is very vulnerable to degradation and even complete loss. In this perspective a rich diversity of flora of Chitteri hills was chosen for the study to document with objectives to reveal the criteria used by the Malayali of Chitteri hills use morphological characters and ecology of species as criteria for identification.