STUDY AREA
The plant species used in this work were collected
Amagu, Ezza South Local Government area of Ebonyi State.
The research design used in this study is purely field survey and observation Amagu
is one of the communities in Ezza South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State
that shares it boundaries with other neighboring communities such as Amaezekwe
to the north.
Nsokkara to the West. Okoffia to the South and Ikwo which is a
local Government to the East.
It has an estimated population of 20,000 people.
It is mostly a low land area. The ecological and high flora of the area is
commendable. Amagu has the derived savanna type of vegetation. Infact most part
of its land mass is by savanna vegetation. The only exception is the rainforest
part of the community.
Though it covers with landmass. At the eastern part of
the rainforest, there is a step hill that is very flat on top, lift there on
top of hill is found a damp which is not of high botanical interest. This is
because, later found that the vegetates surrounding the dam contain some plant
of good medicinal value such as Treculia
Africana and chrysophyllum albidum.
There are predominantly two
alternating seasons which are the wet and dry seasons, the wet start from the
middle of April to October, while the dry seasons sets in from late November to
March.
Farming as one of the major occupations of indigenes of Amagu community
leading to the cultivation of two main food crops which are yam and cassava in
all the medicinal plant investigated in Amagu, it was found out that the
dicotyledons occurred more frequently than the mon ocotyledons also various
plant groups existed in the community these includes the angiosperms,
gymnosperms, pteridophytes and bryoplytes.
But the angiosperms dominated in
diversity and number than the other groups. Different types of plant was found
in the medicinal flora of the area. They include trees, shrubs, herbs, clibers,
lianes etc medicinal application of the plant or parts of the plant used are
stern, bark, root, leaves, seeds and yuice.