1 Definition of medicinal botany
Medicinal plants --- plants with therapeutic, disease prevention and health care functions.
Medicinal Botany --- a discipline that uses morphology, structure, and taxonomic knowledge and methods in botany to study medicinal plants
science.
2 Tasks of learning medicinal botany: (1) Identify the original plant species of Chinese medicine to ensure that the source of the medicinal material is accurate
1) Identification of original plant species of multi-source medicinal materials
Licorice: The 2005 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia contains 3 species:
Glycycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch.
Glycyrrhiza inflata Bat.
Glycyrrhiza glabra L.
In addition, yellow licorice and glandular licorice were used for medicinal purposes, which caused controversy, but the flora merged two species into licorice, and its sequence also supported the results.
Other species of the same genus shall not be used as "licorice" for medicinal purposes.
2) Clarification of the foreign body of the same name: For example, the folk often refer to the Chinese medicine boxing ginseng and Chonglou as Caoheche, which are actually two kinds of Chinese medicines with different origins.
Boxing ginseng: The 2005 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia records 1 type:
Boxing ginseng polonum bistorta L.
Chonglou: The 2005 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia records 2 types:
Paris polyphylla Smith var.yunnanensis (Franch.)Hand.-Mazz.
Horse chestnut leaf one branch flower P. polyphylla Smith var.chinensis（Franch.）Hara
3) Collation of homogeneous names
For example, the plant Siphonostegia chinensis of the family Metaphyllaceae is called Liu Jinu in the north and Ling Yin Chen in the south.
Another example is the tiger palm Pinelia pedatisecta (palm leaf half summer), the large and lateral buds are called the southern star (tiger palm south star); the small and non-side buds are called half summer.
(2) Investigate and study medicinal plant resources to lay the foundation for expanding the utilization and protection of resources.
(3) Use the discipline law to find and develop new drug resources
Phytochemical taxonomy reveals that the closer the plant is related, not only the morphological structure is similar, but also the chemical components contained in the body are more similar. There are many success stories of finding new drugs based on this rule:
Reserpine - the active ingredient extracted from Rauwolfia serpentina of snake root wood (India), and later found the same genus of R. r. 100 in Yunnan, Guangxi and Hainan in China. Reserpine is found in plants such as verticillata.
Petrocaprin is found in the rock cabbage Bergenia purpurascens, and higher levels of chakrain are also found in the genus and its consortia.