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Background Home gardens are popular micro land-use system and are socioeconomically linked with people for their livelihood. In the foothill region of Eastern Himalaya, very less documentations are available on species richness of the home gardens, particularly on the ethnomedicinal plants. We assumed that the home garden owners of the study site are domesticating ethnomedicinal plants which are not easily accessible to them in the wild due to distant forest. This study was planned to explore and document the diversity and population status of ethnomedicinal plants in the home gardens along with its ethnomedicinal use. Methods The present study was conducted in the home gardens of Cooch Behar district of West Bengal from May 2017 to May 2018. A multidisciplinary approach like collection of plant specimen, interview with structured questionnaire for documenting the utilization pattern, and quadrat methods for population study was applied. We selected 150 study sites randomly in the village cluster. The owners of the gardens were the respondents for the household survey. The study documented diversity, population size, and medicinal uses of ethnomedicinal plant species identified by the garden owners growing or being grown in their gardens. Results A total of 260 plant species were reported, of which, 53 were utilized for different ethnomedicinal applications. These 53 species were represented by 35 families and 45 genera. Most of these ethnomedicinal species were woody perennials (37.73%). Cocus nucifera dominated the list with highest number of use followed by Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. The use value of the species varied from 0.006 to 0.53, while the fidelity value (%) ranged from 2.29 to 93.75%. The leaves of the plants were mostly used for ethnomedicinal applications (19 species) followed by fruits (12 species) and bark (9 species), and the least was the root (7 species). We documented 20 different ailments/diseases cured by using these plants. In some cases, more than one species are used to cure a disease or ailment. As many as 10 species were used to cure only stomach-related problems. Some more diseases like cough and cold and jaundice were treated using six and four species, respectively. Conclusion This documented list of 260 plant species including 53 ethnomedicinal ones from the home gardens of the study area indicates that these gardens are key in maintaining diversity and source of healthcare system in agricultural dominant landscape. Documenting such ecological status and traditional applications becomes a prerequisite for developing conservation and management strategies of home gardens to be included in the mainstream conservation processes. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13002-019-0293-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

in natural waters exist in two states, i.e., one that is truly dissolved and one that is bound to DOM [12]. While this binding decreases a hydrophobe's apparent volatility, bioavailability, and attachment to particles and increases its apparent solubility, binding also brings a hydrophobic contaminant into a chemical environment that is distinct from water and thus can affect its reactivity. Estimates of the impact of DOM on terrestrial C balance mostly rely on the fluxes measured in river waters. The flux of DOM in river water ranges from 1 to 10 g C m-2 y-1 for many ecosystems [13]. Therefore, these fluxes are considered a small or insignificant component of the ecosystem C budget as compared to the C fluxes associated with primary productivity or heterotrophic respirations in terrestrial ecosystems [14]. However, there are several reasons to believe that DOM fluxes are more important than that suggested by usually small river fluxes. Over time scales ranging from few months to several years, a consistent loss of DOM from the soil profile can reduce the capacity of ecosystems to sustain primary productivity [15]. The DOM fluxes through soil profile can be much larger than the fluxes associated with runoff that eventually ends up in stream water (Table 1 and Table 2). Within a soil profile, DOM dynamics is an important mechanism involved in soil formation. Therefore, it is of great importance to

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