Important Medicinal Plants in Ethiopia: A Review in Years 2015–2020
Authors: Ayele Haile Abebe 
Published: July 2021

Many studies on medicinal plants have been taking place in different parts of Ethiopia and the people use them for the preparation of traditional herbal medicine. The purpose of the current study is to review the assessment of the medicinal plants used in Ethiopia, to compile the components used, the method of preparation, the medical uses, and the compilation of the number of medicinal plants in 2015–2020. This review paper took place in the years 2015 to 2020 from the published papers. Various databases, such as Science Direct, PubMed, and Google Scholar, have been searched. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentages, charts, and numbers using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet 2010. In Ethiopia, a total of 4,007 medicinal plants were identified from different areas by different authors in the years 2015–2020. But, from this total number of identified medicinal plants, there was a similarity between types of plant species. Therefore, this total result has present similarities in plant species and types found in different areas. In 2015, a total of 1,062 medicinal plants were identified from different areas by different authors. Similarly, 315, 613, 944, 341, 732 medicinal plants were identified by different authors in different study areas in the years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. The years 2015 and 2018 were the years many plants of medicinal value were documented. The growth forms of medicinal plants were analyzed from 2015 to 2020 in the different study areas with different authors but with the same year and valued for each year and put the average one. To calculate the 2015 growth form of medicinal plants for example to calculate herbs, add all herbs identified by different authors in the same year, and take the average one. This method applied to all growth forms of medicinal plants each year. In all years (2015–2020) the dominant growth forms were herbs. The highest average of growth form was herb in the year 2020 which is 44.2%. In all years the least growth form was a climber. In all growth forms, the parts used for medicine were identified. Add each medicinal plant’s parts in the same year and then take the average for all years. In 2020 year, the traditional healers mostly used leaves (56.3%) for the preparation of remedy. In general, in all year leaves was dominant for the preparation of remedy. Oral and dermal ways of the route of administration were the most important in medicinal plants to treat directly different ailments. The route of administration was varying in percentage from year to year and also, a place to place according to the potential of traditional healers and type of diseases. But, different study areas and years showed that oral administration was the dominant one. In 2019, most of the prepared remedy was taken orally. Crushing was the most important and more cited in the preparation of remedy in the year 2015–2020. Also, powdering, boiling, chewing, concoction, grinding, direct and immediate, chopping, squeezing, decoction, boiling/unprocessed use, liquid form, Homogenizing in water, heating, cooking, smoking, and fumigation are common methods of preparation of remedy. In general, this review highlights the situation of Ethiopian traditional medicinal plants associated with their knowledge from years to years. In addition, this review paper plays an important role in the extraction of potential medicinal plants to discover new drugs through detailed researches in the future.