Establishing Identification Criteria for Botanicals

Abstract

Botanical identification is necessary to ensure efficacy and minimize any possible toxicity and may help in identifying possible contaminants. The identification of drug botanicals differs from that of living plants since the botanical is usually in a dried form and may also have been subjected to other processing procedures. Other factors which may present problems in identification are the loss of cellular material during preparation, intraspe-cific variation which exists in plants, and the methods by which features can be accurately described and understood by nonspecialists.