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Feeling no pain: plants were first to let it happen

Age of Herbals somewhere  during  1565 in this part of globe saw many medical man searching...

Sitopaladi churna is an ayurvedic medicine for cough and cold

Sitopaladi churna is an ayurvedic medicine for cough and cold and sneezing nose. A little portion...

Ethnobotany and Ocimum sanctum (Tulsi)

The term 'ethnobotany' was first applied by Harshberger in 1895 to the study of plants used by...

Gene, gene expression, gene silencing and RNAi

Gene Expression?–What is a Gene?A gene codes for a homogeneous ‘functional unit’ – classically...

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Ashwani KumarRSS Feed of this column.

Professor Emeritus ,Former Head of the Department of Botany, and Director Life Sciences, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. 302004, India At present freelance consultant with Bioenergia. Spain and... Read More »

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It is almost impossible to ascribe different happenings on the earth like Tsunami, Volcanic eruptions, or Tornadoes, or Floods, or droughts or melting of glaciers in different parts of the world to some simple phenomenon : climate change. What is climate change ? In simple terms permanent change in temperature and weather conditions of a place . However the random phenomenon cannot be ascribed to climate change theory, my friends will argue that such things keep on happening in some sort of cycles. I am of the opinion around 85 percent of the earth surface was forest some centuries ago. Man made encroachments on land , sea, air and its greed to exploit more water, more fossil fuel, to have more productivity is causing enormous pressure on earth resources.
People want to remain happy feel good all the time. Some blogs even point out to remain happy even in adverse circumstances. I wish to share my personal experience. The moment I write a blog on " there is limited supply of water " or something about destruction of vegetation and try to paint a real pictures of what might be outcome of rampant destruction of vegetation or try to remind people that human beings are just one part of plant and animals living on this earth my "blog clicks" start going down as probably no one wants to read or imagine what is going to come in next 50 years . People try to "wish away" the realities of future imagining it is not going to happen in their lifetime.
Ethnobotany is defined as the study of the relationship between people and plants and most commonly refers to the study of indigenous uses of plants. In other words, it is the marriage between cultural anthropology and botany, a study that investigates the roles of plants as medicine, nurishment, natural resources or gateways to the gods. Usually it is considered a relatively young field of study. Officially it has only been recognized as an academic discipline for about a hundred years. However, this view is deceptive. In fact, the investigation of plants and their uses is one of the most primary human concerns, which has been practiced by all cultures for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years - its just that it wasn't called 'Ethnobotany' then.
Ayurveda consist of two words ‘Ayur’ and ‘Veda’. It is a Sanskrit term and it literally means the science of life (Sharma, 1979). The scope of Ayurveda is vast. It not only deals with the prevention of disease and promotion of health and longevity but it also cures the disease. It also deals with rejuvenation. It can also be called the science of living and it is upveda of Atharva veda. It treats an individual as a whole and not only the symptoms or the affected parts, unlike modern medicines. India due to its unique variety of geographical and climatic factors had a rich and varied flora of medicinal plants.
In European city and particularly in Germany one has to keep three bags one for the organic waste ( a wooden container kept in the garden with a outlet at the base and inlet at the top which will convert the organic waste into compost) , one for plastic waste which will be recycled, and one for paper waste. Besides this the glass disposal according to colored glass was also meant for recycling the glass . If we could follow the same system in this country also or globally also it will help preserve the nature and result in recycling of organic matter , plastic and paper and also glass. This will also save people from bad smell coming out of heaps of garbage.
Cassia fistula belonging to Leguminosae family, is widely used for its medicinal properties, its main property being that of a mild laxative suitable for children and pregnant women. It is also a purgative due to the wax aloin and a tonic (Satyavati and Sharma, 1989) and has been reported to treat many other intestinal disorders like healing ulcers (Biswas et al., 1973; Kirtikar and Basu, 1975). The plant has a high therapeutic value and it exerts an antipyretic and analgesic effect (Patel et al., 1965). Besides, it has been found to exhibit antinflammatory and hypoglycaemic activity (Datta and Kumar, 1985).