Research Paper
Year: 2022 | Month: July | Volume: 9 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 438-445
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20220748
Herbal Wealth of the Coastal Village of Melmidalam, Tamilnadu, India
Maybel Starlin.N
Department of Botany and Research Centre, Nesamony Memorial Christian College, Marthandam, Kanyakumari District-629165, Tamilnadu, India
ABSTRACT
The district of Kanyakumari lies at geographical co-ordinates between 77° 15' and 77° 36' east and 8° 03' and 8° 35' north. The district is located at the southerly point of Peninsular India. Kanyakumari district is often cited as 'Land's end'. Kanyakumari has 504.86 sq.km. of government forests which can be calculated as 30.2 percent of the total area of the territory. The average rainfall of the district is 1456.8 mm per annum. Unlike other districts in Tamil Nadu, Kanyakumari receives a fairly good rainfall from both southwest and northeast monsoons. Kanyakumari coastal line has a length of about 71.5 km. Melmidalam is a coastal Village on the shore of the Arabian Sea in Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, India. It is situated near the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This village is the part of Midalam Panchayat of Killiyoor Block, Vilavancode taluk. Coastal region is an ecological storehouse of biodiversity. The plants are playing a vital role in protecting the coast from erosion and flooding. These coastal villages have a population of 1, 48,539 fishermen, forming 19 percent of the total fisherman population (7, 90,408) in Tamil Nadu. The potential availability of medicinal plants in wild areas is threatened by rising use and overexploitation, which raises concern about their conservation. Hence the present study was undertaken to document the ethnomedicinal knowledge of Melmidalam village, to assess the medicinal plant diversity of the coasts and to enumerate information about morphologically useful parts of the medicinal plants to cure various ailments.
Keywords: Ailments, biodiversity, ethnomedicinal knowledge, Melmidalam..
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