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Asian medicine: Protect rare plants

Nature volume 482, page 35 (2012)Cite this article

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As the global market in traditional Chinese medicines expands, many wild plants are on the brink of extinction (see also Nature 481, 265; 2012). Urgent measures must be taken to ensure that these rare plants are harvested sustainably.

Some 11,000 plant species are listed in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, medicinal botany textbooks and ancient Chinese medical texts such as the Compendium of Materia Medica and Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

    Hua-Feng Zhang

  2. Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

    Xiao-Hua Yang

  3. Moscow State University, Russia

    Xiao-Hua Yang

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  1. Hua-Feng Zhang
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  2. Xiao-Hua Yang
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Correspondence to Xiao-Hua Yang.

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Zhang, HF., Yang, XH. Asian medicine: Protect rare plants. Nature 482, 35 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/482035e

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  1. Stephan Lloyd Watkins

    Somone should start circulating such things, along with associated market values of the plants, and the need to grow multiple types of plants, etc...

    I mean a 100 or more well written e-mails, letters FAXes and phone calls can do more than most people think. They key is somone with a golden tongue re-doing everything as a marketing strategy for the ones whom project a desired outcome.

    If you can make it marketable, you know with China and South Asia the highest growing economies followed by Garden states in South America and Africa, why then people whom only care about profits might actually try and save some of these dissappearing money crops.

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