Medicinal plants-significance

Herbs are a group of plants which constitute mostly medicinal plants. Today, the artificial products that are made from the chemicals are not preferred just at the expense of herbal products of similar kind which serve the same purpose. It can be said that herbal "renaissance" is taking place all over the world. The synthetic products are not considered safer than the herbal products which are safe without any side effects to the environment and human health. Since a long time, herbs formed an important part of the lives of many people as they have medicinal quality, aromatic quality and flavoring nature. For a few years, the synthetic products have replaced these herbs. But, most of the people have turned again towards the herbal products. This happened because of their dependence on herbs for safety and security.

In the total population of the world, about 3/4th of them depend on plants and extracts of the plants for the health purpose. From the ancient times, around 30 percent of the entire plant world has been utilized for medicinal purpose. These plants are found to have medicinal properties possessed by any of their plant parts. Some of the phytochemical constituents of a few of the plants were proved by the scientific research studies and by regulatory organizations like food and drug administration or European food safety authority.

Pharmacognosy is the branch of science that deals with the medicines, which are derived from plants and other natural sources. The Indian herbal medicinal measure is completely mentioned in the branch of medicine called as Ayurveda. Ayurveda was considered as an alternative and complementary medicine. Each and every plant discussed in Ayurveda has its own peculiarity in curing a specific disease. The interest in these plants has increased recently and the western people also have started to carry out research on plant based medicines.

The medicinal plants give rise to products that range from pharmaceutical products to herbal medicines. Medicinal plants are gathered in earlier days by wild crafting done by the people who are talented in identification of plants. Some of the medicinal plants can be cultivated which makes them to be available to the large public. The cultivation of these plants can allow the people to buy the products made from them for low prices as they are produced in large quantities. Plants consisting of active compounds with pharmacological properties can be used for preparing many types of medicines. Chemists are more interested these days to study the medicinal plants as they can isolate a useful medicinal compound which can be part of a drug.