Traditional Medicinal Plant Knowledge in the Guba District of Azerbaijan: An Ethnobotanical Study

Medicinal plants remain important components of rural healthcare and everyday household practices in Azerbaijan, yet their uses remain insufficiently documented in many culturally diverse regions. This study investigated which medicinal plants are used in the Guba District, how their uses vary according to informant characteristics and ecological setting, and which species-use records may differ from those documented elsewhere in the Caucasus. During 2024-2025, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 260 informants from 40 villages representing Azerbaijani, Lezgi, Tat, Khinalug, Kryts, Jek, and Mountain Jewish (Juhuri-speaking) communities. The principal dataset comprised 193 medicinal plant taxa belonging to 170 genera and 59 families, based on 7385 informant-taxon citations and 8682 use-reports. Eleven additional taxa, each cited by one to four informants within a single settlement, were documented separately as rare, locality-specific records. Descriptive comparisons showed that traditional healers reported broader medicinal plant repertoires than other community members, whereas differences according to gender, education, and ecological zone were comparatively modest. Comparison with selected primary ethnobotanical studies from Azerbaijan and neighboring Caucasian regions identified 36 species-use records as potentially novel within the defined comparative corpus. Thirty-five medicinal taxa were also used as foods and 22 as melliferous plants, demonstrating that local medicinal knowledge is embedded in dietary practices, beekeeping, animal husbandry, and other household activities. Twenty-four medicinal taxa were included in Azerbaijan's national conservation lists. These findings demonstrate the biocultural importance of Guba's medicinal flora and support community-centered multilingual documentation, safety awareness, and sustainable-harvesting initiatives.