The use of medicinal plants for treatment of humans and animals is entrenched in the Maasai culture and traditional knowledge related to it is passed on from one generation to the next. A handful of researchers have in the past decades documented this knowledge. No single study has documented medicinal plant uses of the Maasai community as a whole. This review provides a consolidated database of the diversity and uses of medicinal plants among the Maasai in Kenya. The study will help conserve traditional medicinal plant knowledge that is valuable for the development of modern medicine. Relevant information on medicinal plants used by the Maasai of Kenya was extracted from journals, books, M.Sc., and Ph.D. dissertations. We found evidence of 289 plant species used by the Maasai of Kenya in traditional medicine. Most species were used to treat health conditions in the categories gastrointestinal and respiratory system disorders. The most used families were Leguminosae, Asteraceae, Malvaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Lamiaceae. Medicines were commonly prepared as a decoction and administered through oral ingestion, with roots reported to be the preferred plant part for medication. The Maasai preference for roots compared to other plant parts may be unsustainable and could threaten species availability in the future.

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Knowledge and practice of medicinal plant use is embedded in the Maasai culture. However, it is not known how that knowledge and practices are acquired by children and transferred across generations. We assessed children’s knowledge of medicinal plants and their uses, methods of knowledge acquisition and transfer, and how that process is influenced by demographic attributes such as gender, level of education, and age. We interviewed 80 children who were 6–17 years old. Mann–Whitney U, Kruskal–Wallis tests and Spearman Rank order correlation were performed to determine the influence of gender, level of education, and age when they are in the process of acquiring ethnomedicinal plant knowledge. The Maasai children acquired knowledge of medicinal plants progressively with their age. Ethnomedicinal knowledge was not influenced by gender or level of education. The children were introduced to the knowledge of local medicinal plants and their use at an average age of seven years and the knowledge was transferred indiscriminately to both girls and boys. This study aids in the protection and conservation of medicinal plant knowledge by encouraging the sustainability of the local cultural heritage.