Herbal plants traded at the Kaili medicinal market, Guizhou, China.

The medicinal plants sold in the Kaili market are highly diverse and have unique medicinal characteristics. The Miao people often use traditional herbal plants for disease prevention and thereby prioritize the use of medicinal plants in everyday life. The future of this medicinal marketplace, however, is uncertain since few young people (< 30 years old) are vendors or customers. Therefore, it is urgent to conserve traditional ethnomedicinal culture in local communities and pass on the associated traditional knowledge to future generations in this prefecture. And the next step should include further studies on FL > 90% plants' chemistry, pharmacology, biological activity, and toxicity for potentially developing functional foods or pharmaceutical products.