Wild Edible Plants And Their Medicinal Uses – The Nigerian Perspective

Plants in their natural habitats have been of tremendous value containing innumerable phytocompounds with immense chemical compositions and medicinal importance. The words “wild edible plants” represent those plants; fruits, seeds, leaves, roots in their natural habitats that grow without being cultivated and are fit for consumption. They have been used solely in the past as sources of food and healing for different ailments by indigenous users and as time progresses scientists began to use them and they became sources of lead to existing drugs both synthetic and semi-synthetic. Some of these plants remain unexploited and underutilized. However, deforestation is causing the extinction of these plants with major developmental strides to accommodate growing populations.

Nigeria is indeed rich in bio-diversity with potential wild edible plants yet to be explored. Some have also been successfully cultivated to encourage conservation of biodiversity. A Survey of wild edible plants and fungi are presented.