Dai Traditional Use Of The Beverage Plant Research

Conservation of ethnobotanical culture and searching for the reasons of traditional knowledge losing have been paid more attention by the world. As a main minority, the Dai people of Xishuangbanna has thousands of history, and they have accumulated abundant knowledge of ethnical forest culture including wild edible plant, medicinal plant and so on, which is a treasure of Chinese culture. Based on the predecessors'studies on Dai people's ethnobotanical culture, we study the utilization and its knowledge of Dai people on traditional beverage plants, this is a significant issue for the maintaining of traditional culture and conservation of biodiversity, and it provides basal source for exploting new beverage plant resources. Ethnobotanical methods including informant interview, statistics, voucher specimens collection and literature study were applied to study the utilization of traditional beverage plants and its change in three Dai villages, which have different environment and different development. Results have been gained as followings.1. A total of 142 species of beverage plants belonging to 52 families and 115 generas have been recorded in the three Dai villages, of which 12% (15 species) are cultivated crops and others are wild plants. Species of high frequency mentioned by the informants belong to the families of Papilionaceae, Agrostidoideae, Verbenaceae and Euphorbiaceae etc. The more species to be used are the famillies of Papilionaceae (19 spp), Agrostidoideae (8 spp), Rubiaceae (8 spp) and Euphorbiaceae (6 spp). The situation is closely relationship with the local flora.2. The parts used of plant chosen by Dai people are of diverse, most species are used in root proportion (44.4%), then leaf (39.4%) and stem (18.3%). The methods of processing includs solarize, roast, boil and so on. However, the special preparation of material is toasting on the fire before boiled, which shows the unique character of beverage plants utilization by Dai people of Xishuangbanna.3. It is said that"The same source of medicine and food"by Dai people. Of the 142 species of beverage plants, 61.5% have been mentioned to hold medicinal functions, 34.8% for againsting digestive system disease, 13.9% for defervesceing and...