**3. Results and discussion**

#### **3.1 Demography and knowledge variation**

A total of 80 informants (35 males; 45 females) were selected to gathered knowledge about usage of wild edible plants from District Bagh. The informants were divided into four groups i.e. gender, age, education and profession (**Table 1**). The informants were first classified on the base of gender. Women informants were more in number as compared to men because the interviewee was female and women do not hesitate to share information with her. Besides, the women had high traditional knowledge (average cited species 3.90; average cited uses 5.15) about usage of wild edible plants as compared to male (average cited species 4.56; average cited uses 6.73) This may because the women generally mange the indoor and domestic activities while the males mostly engage in earning and field works. The other reason may be strongly connected network among the women and greater knowledge sharing with high number of central individual. These findings are strongly supported by Kayani et al., Aziz et al., Shaheen et al., Farooq et al. and Amjad et al.

Age was second criteria used for classification of informants. Base on age the informants were categorized into three categories i. e. 20–40, 41–60 and 60–80. The older age people (between 60 and 80) had more knowledge (average cited species 11.32; average cited uses 12.91) about wild edible followed by elder (average cited species 8.16; average cited uses 7.31) and younger (average cited species 3.44; average cited uses 3.67). The older age people had vast experience of practicing wild plants. While the younger had limited interest in learning and practicing traditional


*Ethnomedicinal Appraisal of Traditionally Used Wild Edible Plants of District Bagh, Azad… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104492*

*Key: ANSCI, average species cited by each informant; ANUCI, average N use cited by each informant.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Demographic characteristic of informants.*

knowledge due to change in lifestyle and modernization. Similar trend were also observed by Qaseem et al. in Kotli, Shaheen et al. in Pearl valley and Umair et al. [26] in Hafizabad.

The third significant factor was education. Educated peoples had less knowledge about wild edible plants as compared to educated people. This is due to frequent utilization and direct attachment of uneducated informants with wild edible plants species. Beside they mostly contact with traditional healers during illness. The modern education and culture mostly detach the people from nature. Likewise, the traditional health practitioner (hakim) had more knowledge about wild plants because they remain in touch with them. They have strong academic knowledge about usage of herbs for curing various ailments. Previous reports from other areas of Pakistan and other world also report similar findings.
