Status of medicinal and aromatic plants in - Inia

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PRESENTED PAPERS 65 The regional laws to protect flora are more or less severe according to regions. In most regions the harvesting of unprotected species and of plants growing outside protected areas is unrestricted. On the contrary in other regions, in addition to a list of protected plants whose harvest is forbidden, severe limitations in the collection of other species are also provided and only a few specimens are allowed. Derogations to these restrictions are provided only for scientific, pharmaceutical, medicinal or educational purposes, but in any case harvesting needs an authorization. The regional law of Veneto does not provide derogations for "medicinal" purposes and as a consequence, in this region, MAP collecting is forbidden. The only exception is wild asparagus, of which you may harvest 1 kg/day. In the regional lists of protected plants you may also find some "classic" MAPs (Table 4) among which Dictamus albus L., Gentiana lutea L. and two species of Ruscus (R. aculeatus L. and R. ipoglossum L.) are the most frequently recurring. Table 4. MAPs present in the lists of protected plants in different Italian regions Genus Species Val d'Aosta Piedmont Liguria Lombardy Veneto Trentino Alto Adige Friuli V.G. Emilia Rom. Tuscany Umbria Marche Lazio Campania Abruzzo Calabria Achillea erba-rotta All. X Aconitum sp. X X Arnica montana L. X (1) X X (2) X Artemisia laxa F. X Artemisia umbelliformis Lam X Atropa bella-donna L. X X (4) X Crocus sp. X X X Dictamus albus L. X X X X X X X X X X Gentiana sp. X (1) X X X X X X X X X X Glycyrrhiza glabra L. X Hyssopus officinalis L. X X X Iris sp. X X X X X Juniperus sp. X X Mandragora autumnalis Bert. X Myrtus communis L. X Paeonia officinalis L. X X X X X X X X X Pistacia lentiscus L. X Ruscus sp. X X X X X X (2) X (3) X X X Solidago virgaurea subsp. littoralis (Savi) X Burnat Taxus baccata L. X X X X X X Thymus vulgaris L. X Urginea maritima Bak. X (4) Viscum album L. X (1) It is allowed to collect 6 flowering stems per day/person and 24 flowering stems per groups >3 people (2) It is allowed to collect daily 1 kg of edible, fresh parts per person (3) It is allowed to collect daily 10 flowering stems/person (4) A collecting authorization is needed Instead of referring to "protected species", in some regions of southern Italy (Basilicata and Puglia) and in the islands (Sicily and Sardinia), the lawmakers have designated "protected areas" in which every kind of capture (animals) or collecting (plants, lichens and mosses) is forbidden. In the Basilicata region there are 9 natural protected areas, in Puglia there are 33 in total (7 in each of the Bari and Lecce provinces, 11 in the province of Taranto and 4 in each of the Brindisi and Foggia provinces); in Sardinia 9 natural parks are present, covering more than 300 000 ha. These laws have also undoubtedly contributed to preserving MAP genetic resources; nevertheless, in the meantime the reasons for the increasing rarity and/or extinction of these
66 WORKING GROUP ON MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS: FIRST MEETING plants have changed: apart from oregano (Origanum vulgare L. subsp. hirtum (Link) Ietswaart), still abundantly collected in central and southern Italy, and myrtle (Myrtus communis L.), collected in Sardinia to make liqueurs, wild collecting has drastically decreased because very few people still take part in this activity. Conservation ex situ It is well known that the earliest attempts to conserve MAPs ex situ date back to the Middle Ages when the first "Horti sanitatis" were established in the monasteries. Afterwards, during the Renaissance the first botanical gardens called "gardens of simples" were laid down according to similar patterns (Del Prete et al. 2001). The earliest botanical garden in the world was established in Pisa in 1543-1544, while a garden connected with the Medicean court, in which MAPs were grown, already existed in Florence in 1544. While no traces of either of these gardens remain, the botanical garden of Padua, founded in 1545, still exists and is tended. Furthermore numerous other universities endowed themselves with similar institutions and there are currently 38 botanical gardens in Italian universities. In addition there are 31 alpine gardens, including 16 located in the actual Alpine areas, 15 others in the Apennines (Sicily included) and 12 thematic gardens of which one is dedicated to MAPs, the "Giardino delle erbe" of Casola Valsenio. Nevertheless, this large number of institutions does not mean that MAP genetic resources are abundant and properly conserved, as in most cases these institutions have only an educational function. Activities at a national level to record MAP natural resources Because of the huge environmental variation in Italy and the restricted economic importance of MAPs in our country, it is not feasible to record MAP natural resources at the national level. In the recent past some studies have been carried out on wild populations of oregano (De Mastro 1996; Leto 1996). More recently, research on the characterization of different wild populations of Chamomilla recutita Rausch. collected in northern (Aiello et al. 2001) and central Italy (Taviani et al. 2002) and numerous populations of myrtle and Rosmarinus officinalis L. collected in Sardinia (Mulas 2001) is still underway within the National Project IPPO ("Increase of medicinal and aromatic plants production"). According to research carried out in Trentino (Prosser 2000), involving 10 years of plant mapping, 30.6% of the species (723 out of 2359) are considered as threatened, including some MAP species. For instance, according to the categories adopted by IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature): Centaurea cyanus L. and Marrubium vulgare L. are considered critically endangered (CR); Lactuca virosa L. and Rosa gallica L., endangered (EN); Gratiola officinalis L., Hyoscyamus niger L. and Hyssopus officinalis L., vulnerable (VU); Althaea officinalis L., Equisetum pratense Ehrh., Leonorus cardiaca L. and Lithospermum officinale L., at low risk (LR). Also according to this research, the main factor threatening the conservation of plant genetic resources (PGR) seems to be the change in land use in the agricultural and pastoral sectors: land abandonment and high-input agricultural practices together account for almost 3/4 (73%) of all the threatening factors identified. As regards the inventory of PGR ex situ, within the project "Cultural Assets", the group "Botanical and historical garden" has been working for about 4 years to draw up a complete list of the gardens being included in this project and of their corresponding collections (Del Prete et al. 2001). On a smaller scale, taking the opportunity of this meeting, the authors of this paper contacted numerous botanical gardens and recorded the list of MAPs held by 15 of these (Table 5).
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ISBN 92-9043-633-6 Cover photos: co
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Status of medicinal and aromatic plants in - Inia

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