Traditional knowledge in semi-rural close to industrial areas: ethnobotanical studies in western Gironès (Catalonia, Iberian Peninsula)

[Background] The western Gironès is a district located in NE Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula). This area comprising 186.55 km2 and 10,659 inhabitants is composed of 5 municipalities encompassing 29 villages, located in the hydrographic basins of the Ter and Llémena rivers.[Methods] Following the methodology based on the semi-structured interviews, we carried out 40 interviews with 57 informants, 31 were women and the remaining 26 were men, with an average age of 78.6 years.[Results] In the present study, data from 316 taxa (301 angiosperms, 8 gymnosperms, and 7 pteridophytes) belonging to 89 botanical families were collected. The interviewed informants referred 3776 UR of 298 taxa, 1933 (51.19%) of them corresponding to the food category, 949 (25.13%) to the medicinal ones, and 894 (23.68%) to other uses. In addition, 581 vernacular names for 306 species, subspecies, and varieties have also been collected.[Conclusions] These results reveal the validity of traditional knowledge in the studied area, which can be seriously threatened by the loss of its rural condition and its proximity to industrialized areas.This research was supported by projects 2014SGR00514 and 2017SGR1116 from Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government) and PRO2017-S02-VALLES from the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. AG benefited from a predoctoral grant of the Universitat de Barcelona (APIF 2015-2018) and a predoctoral contract of project CGL2017-84297-R of the Spanish government. Finally, we acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)