Module 113 · Ethnobotanical Intelligence

The Apothecary

Morocco has 7,000 plant species. 800 are medicinal. The attar in the souk still prescribes what Ibn al-Baytar catalogued walking from Málaga to Damascus in the 13th century.

The Numbers

The herbalist's shop in Morocco is called l'attar (العطّار). It is not a health food store. It is not an apothecary in the European sense. It is a living pharmacopoeia — a room stacked floor to ceiling with dried roots, bark, resins, seeds, flowers, and powders that have been prescribed continuously for a thousand years.

Morocco sits at the crossroads of three bioclimates: Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Saharan. This diversity — mountains to desert to coast within 200 kilometres — produces a flora ranked second only to Turkey in the entire Mediterranean basin. Of the country's 7,000 recorded plant species, 800 have documented medicinal value. 40 are endemic — found nowhere else on earth.

The knowledge is not written down in manuals that sit on shelves. It is held in the bodies of women who dry, stock, and prepare the remedies. It is held in the attars who learned from their fathers. It is passed verbally from one generation to the next. And it is vanishing — because the young are not always listening.

Where the Plants Grow

Nine medicinal plant regions of Morocco

Tap any marker for the key plants and ethnobotanical notes.

Dominant Plant Families

Percentage of all medicinal taxa in Morocco

The Lamiaceae family alone accounts for ~50% of Morocco's endemic medicinal taxa. Mint, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender — all Lamiaceae.

The Materia Medica

16 key plants ranked by relative frequency of citation

RFC = percentage of informants who cited each plant in ethnobotanical surveys across Morocco. Tap any plant for detail.

The Scholarly Lineage

800 years of writing it down

Bellakhdar's research confirmed that 22% of remedies in use today appear in none of the historical Arabic sources — they are purely local, transmitted orally, never written down until he arrived with a notebook.

The Attar

In Moroccan Arabic, the herbalist is l'attar. The word comes from the Arabic root 'itr — fragrance, essence, the volatile thing inside the plant that makes it work. The attar does not sell herbs. He prescribes. You walk in with a symptom. He gives you a formula. Sometimes it is a single plant. Sometimes it is a blend ground on the spot.

The word laaroug (لعروق) — "roots" — is the Darija term for all underground plant parts used in traditional medicine. Roots, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes. One third of the entire Moroccan pharmacopoeia is derived from what grows beneath the soil. Most are sold dried, which makes identification difficult and substitution common. Herbalists in Marrakech identified 67 medicinal roots by vernacular name alone.

The knowledge transmission is fragile. Women still prepare remedies at home — drying, blending, stocking. 54% of herbalists learned from other herbalists, not from family. And the younger generation is not always continuing the chain. When an attar closes, a library closes.

Part Used · Legend

One third of all Moroccan remedies use underground parts (roots, bulbs, rhizomes). Leaves are the most common above-ground part.

Morocco is the second-richest country for plant biodiversity in the entire Mediterranean basin. 800 species heal. 40 exist nowhere else. The global market for medicinal plants reached $4.18 billion in 2023. Morocco ranks 12th in global exports.

But the most valuable thing is not the plant. It is the person who knows what it does. And that person is getting older.

Sources