Ever since I joined studies in pharmacy, which is as far as 30 years ago, the subject of pharmacognosy (PC) has been of great interest to me. PC has also seen a lot of ups and downs driven by the growth of pharmaceutical industry, changing consumer habits and desires, and recent consumer movement toward the use of natural materials. There is some resurgence in herbals, which has brought PC again to attention. However, the aspect of identification and study of pharmacognostic properties of raw herbs appears to have not got the attention it deserves. The methodology of teaching students the first few chapters of PC in making them identify morphologic and microscopic characteristics of herbals has not changed much. Though chemotaxonomy, genotaxonomy and some amount of molecular taxonomy have evolved, the routine aspects of methodology used to confirm botanical identity of plants and their parts have remained more or less the same. While the industrial usage of plants and their parts, either as such or after processing, has gone up (with their use in dietary supplements, additives to foods, as ingredients in cosmetics as well as to formulate traditional medicines on industrial scale), the technology for confirming their botanical identity has not seen much changes. Read More...