The medicinal flora of native North America: An analysis

Abstract

This paper describes an analysis of the plants of North America which have been used medicinally by Native North Americans. A method using regression residuals is developed for analyzing large quantities of data, divided into subgroups of varying sorts and sizes. The analysis shows that the medicinal species utilized by Native North Americans are distributed in a highly non-random fashion across subclasses and families as well as across groups defined in terms of growth habit and life pattern. This distribution makes sense in terms of both the defensive chemistry and the "complexity" of plants.