Medicinal service supply by wild plants in Samburu, Kenya: Comparisons among medicinal plant assemblages

Abstract Supply of medicinal plants from African landscapes is crucial because of their widespread use. Rapid climate change and land use change are potential threats to this resource but knowledge about the ecological needs of many of these plants is still rather limited. More knowledge about potential threats to medicinal plants supply and options to prevent future losses are desirable. Therefore, the objectives of the study were to examine (1) the effects of environmental drivers on the occurrence of medicinal plant species, (2) how different vegetation formations contribute to the provision of plants used for the treatment of diseases and (3) how these contributions are secured by redundancy. The analysis was based on a sample of 130 sampling plots in Samburu County, Kenya. We identified patterns in medicinal plants co-occurrences using classification and ordination analyses and analyzed these pattern in terms of environmental drivers, service diversity and service security. The pattern in medicinal plants co-occurrences reflected the distribution of broad formations (bushed grassland, forest, wooded grassland, savanna) driven by differences in grazing pressure, drought, slope and fraction of sand in soils. Each of the formations brought with it its own characteristic endowment with medicinal plants. The formations differed in the diversity and security of medicinal services provided. All resulted as fulfilling unique services with diseases treated by plants occurring exclusively in one or another formation. Forests featured the highest diversity of medicinal services, with medicinal plants used against 67 diseases. The supply security in forests, resulting from redundancy in supply provision, was moderate. In contrast to this, savanna grasslands featured plants with uses against 49 diseases, some of them were treated exclusively by plants from savanna grasslands. This formation also showed the highest redundancy. Wooded grasslands showed very little redundancy and is likely to be adversely affected by climate change. Whereas savannas feature the largest pool of medicinal plants and should receive due attention, urgent and highest conservation priority should, presently and in future, go towards the wooded grassland that had the lowest supply redundancy for traditional medicine.