Status of medicinal and aromatic plants in - Inia

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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).