Medicinal and alimentary Legumes utilized in the conurbation Buenos Aires-La Plata, Argentina

This contribution includes the results of a study within Urban Ethnobotany about those Legumes employed with medicinal and food purposes in the biggest conurbation of Argentina: Greater Buenos Aires-Greater La Plata. Plants, parts of them and derived products were evaluated. Products that circulate in diverse shops of the area correspond to 32 taxa. Those are catalogued as products with generalized diffusion (present in the general commercial circuit), restricted diffusion (restricted to groups of Bolivian and Asians immigrants taken as reference) and expanding diffusion (species which products are passing from restricted to general circuit, from their access in health stores called "dieteticas"). Besides, the paper includes 35 taxa native and adventitious in the area, that have been recorded as food and medicine, and 36 taxa cultivated as ornamental, that are employed in other regions -but not in the study area-with therapeutic and food purposes. These results contribute to the definition of urban botanical knowledge here presented, as a complex corpus that includes traditional and non traditional components. Likewise, they contribute to the study of the dynamics of this knowledge, expressed by those plant products that are in expansion in the commercial circuit.