medicines Review Himalayan Aromatic Medicinal Plants: A Review of their Ethnopharmacology, Volatile Phytochemistry, and Biological Activities Rakesh K. Joshi 1, Prabodh Satyal 2 and Wiliam N. Setzer 2,* 1 Department of Education, Government of Uttrakhand, Nainital 263001, India;
[email protected] 2 Department of Chemistry, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-256-824-6519; Fax: +1-256-824-6349 Academic Editor: Lutfun Nahar Received: 24 December 2015; Accepted: 3 February 2016; Published: 19 February 2016 Abstract: Aromatic plants have played key roles in the lives of tribal peoples living in the Himalaya by providing products for both food and medicine. This review presents a summary of aromatic medicinal plants from the Indian Himalaya, Nepal, and Bhutan, focusing on plant species for which volatile compositions have been described. The review summarizes 116 aromatic plant species distributed over 26 families. Keywords: Jammu and Kashmir; Himachal Pradesh; Uttarakhand; Nepal; Sikkim; Bhutan; essential oils 1. Introduction The Himalya Center of Plant Diversity [1] is a narrow band of biodiversity lying on the southern margin of the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range with elevations exceeding 8000 m. The plant diversity of this region is defined by the monsoonal rains, up to 10,000 mm rainfall, concentrated in the summer, altitudinal zonation, consisting of tropical lowland rainforests, 100–1200 m asl, up to alpine meadows, 4800–5500 m asl. Hara and co-workers have estimated there to be around 6000 species of higher plants in Nepal, including 303 species endemic to Nepal and 1957 species restricted to the Himalayan range [2–4].