**1. Introduction**

Plant resources have a long history of being used as medicinal materials. It is often cited that 80% of the world's population still relies on traditional medicines to meet their primary health care needs [1] and nearly 25% of modern medicines are derived from nature, many of which were derived from traditional uses [2]. The use of traditional medicines is generally affected by accessibility, availability, and acceptability of health care services. Especially, in remote areas of developing countries, medicinal plants may form the only available source of health care.

Vietnam possesses a vast wealth of historical, cultural, and natural richness that includes big deltas, huge limestone towers, beautiful dunes, lush green forests, and grasslands. The richness can also be seen in the diversity of flora, which is evident with an estimated number of 13,747 vascular plant species [3]. To preserve the rich biodiversity of Vietnam and their sustainable development, the government has demarcated 164 special use forest areas including 30 National Parks, 58 Natural Reserves, 11 Species Conservation Areas, 45 Forest Landscape Protection and 20 Experimental Forests of Scientific Research [3].

The use of traditional medicine in Vietnam has a vibrant history spanning thousands of years. Today, around 75% of Vietnamese people use traditional medicine as their primary source of treatment to meet their health care needs. These users mostly include inhabitants of rural or mountainous areas, which have less accessibility to hospitals or community health care centers [4].

The Tay ethnic people are one of the 54 officially recognized ethnic minorities of Vietnam, whose population is around 150,404 people, accounting for 11.69% of the Thai Nguyen province's population. They are residing mainly in areas such as districts (Đinh Hoá, Phú L ̣ ương, Võ Nhai) (**Figure 1**, [5]). The people belonging to the Tay ethnic group are dependent on forest resources such as wood and non-timber forest products. Their major livelihood activities include the collection of forest products such as wild honey, bamboo shoots, animals, and mushrooms for consumption [6].

Contrary to the growing demand for medicinal plants all over the world, traditional knowledge is declining rapidly, especially in developing countries. Considering the vast floristic wealth of the nature reserve and the rich knowledge of the local community, an urgent need was felt to take over this work, which could help the researchers, forest officials as well as the future generation people involved in ethnobotany research. It is worth mentioning that the knowledge of Tay ethnic people about medicinal plants is vast but poorly documented. Therefore, we were interested in

**Figure 1.** *Studying locations (*●*).*

*Medicinal Plants Used by the Tay Ethnic Group, Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108771*

introducing medicinal plants, medicinal uses, and the experience of recognizing and collecting medicinal plants of the Tay people. Besides, also mentioned some experimental results proving the anti-cancer ability of some herbal species that have been used by the Tay people to treat diseases. Finally, conservation measures to preserve the medicinal plant resources of the Tay people in Thai Nguyen province.
