Compiled by the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia®, this volume addresses the lack of authoritative microscopic descriptions for those medicinal plant species currently in trade. It includes an atlas that provides detailed text and graphic descriptions of more than 140 medicinal plant species and their adulterants.
Designed to meet the needs of the herbal products industry, regulatory agencies, and academic researchers, the book covers plant anatomy at a level appropriate for the pharmacognostic analysis of plant tissues, provides extensive coverage of the history and importance of botanical microscopy, and gives instruction on how to set up a microscopy lab and prepare, view, and archive whole and powdered plant parts for microscopic analysis.
The botanicals covered represent 90 percent of the dollar value of botanical sales in the US and the majority of the botanicals used in North America.
While the focus is on those species that are in high use and those that are commonly adulterated, it also covers a number of popular Asian botanicals, providing the first English language description for many of these.
In addition to the microscopic characterizations, this text presents several introductory chapters that are relevant to overall quality control including botanical nomenclature, adulterations, plant anatomy, and the history of the identification of botanicals.