The Significance of Medicinal Plants in Botanical Gardens

What is the significance of medicinal plants in botanical gardens? “Historically, medicinal plant collections are the cradle of botanical gardens”. The plant kingdom is one of the main living requirements for human beings. Because plants are the source of food and medicine, mankind has focussed their attention on plants and their uses. Considering that the main food crops consist of only about 20 species, the utilization of medicinal plants is certainly very important to mankind both as a resource and in recognizing the significance of the diversity of plants. There are several thousand species of medicinal plants that have been used by mankind and each of them has their own function. Furthermore during the early history of mankind medicinal plants were mainly wild ones so we find a very close relationship between the development of botany and the science of medicinal plants. The celebrated botanist Linneaus was a medical doctor who was knowledgeable on medicinal plants and it led to his life-long study of plants.

During 40–90 A.D. the Greek Dioscorides wrote a volume named “De Materia Medica”, which is the primary botanical work of ancient times and an authoritative reference work which can be regarded as the prototype herbal and pharmacopoeia. A similar situation exists in Chinese history. In ancient times pharmacology was the same as herbalism and the development of herbalism actually led to the development of botany in China. Many large volumes in herbalism represent the development of botany.

Many of the oldest botanical gardens originated from medicinal plant gardens. The initial development of botanical gardens in many parts of the world originated from collections of medicinal plants.