Ethnobotany of Medicinal and Sacred Plants with Ethnopharmacological Potential from Southwestern Colombia

From an applied ethnobotany approach to biocultural and conservation studies, academic research with social projection has advanced, utilizing interdisciplinary collaboration to address the study of medicinal plants from regional contexts. This approach can potentially provide a solution to some problems of the current environmental and health crisis and also function as a process of recovering the culture of traditional medicine in regions of high biodiversity. Thus, this study intends to address the conceptions, uses, management, and conservation practices vis-à-vis medicinal plants in southwestern Colombia, taking into account the cultural values based on collaborative experiences. Reviews of various studies on sacred medicinal plants and their phytochemical principles are presented in three contexts: a) ethnobotany, b) phytochemistry, and c) ethnopharmacology. This is to represent an integrated context to advance the study of medicinal plants in a manner consistent with the possibilities of retributive academic research of an inter-scientific nature and with furthering the local development of medicinal products.