The defendants make up nearly all the male population of the tiny village of Nar, 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) high in the Himalayas, where the bodies of seven men who disappeared after going to hunt for the plant were found in 2009.
The 36 all deny murder and say the victims, who were from outside the village, died accidentally when a fight broke out over the right to hunt for the rare parasitic plant, Yarchagumba.
