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ABSTRACT
In Africa, local communities depend on forests and plants for their daily needs including goods and services. This paper describes ethnobotanical knowledge of five Combretaceae species in western Burkina Faso. Information was obtained from semi-structured interviews, direct observation and personal conversation with local experts and specialists in plant uses. Data were collected in four villages among four ethnic groups. A total of 150 specialist male and female respondents were involved and 400 users were interviewed. The data were analyzed with generalized linear models with binomial errors. The results show that there is a higher share of ethnobotanical knowledge within an ethnic/village group than between ethnic/village groups. The ethnobotanical information was classified in six main categories: food, fodder, construction materials, fuelwood, handicraft and pharmacopoeia, with the six categories except food representing important uses for all the study species. No significant difference was found for gender and age regarding the knowledge of plant species uses, which may be due to the daily life importance, and to the ecological abundance of the selected Combretaceae species.
