About the Book

When working with plant products, identification and quality control are crucial. Microscopic evaluation of plant material can provide a quick, accurate, and inexpensive tool for raw material authentication and assessment of purity. A combination handbook and atlas, compiled by the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia®, American Herbal

Pharmacopoeia: Botanical Pharmacognosy—Microscopic Characterization of Botanical Medicines includes detailed images, drawings, and photomicrographs of sectioned, whole, and powdered material of many important species currently lacking quality descriptions.

Co-edited by Roy Upton, whose knowledge of Ayurvedic, Chinese, and Western practices makes him a true renaissance man in this field, the book supplies full instructions for setting up a microscopy laboratory and performing botanical microscopy for the identification of plant material. The botanicals covered in the book represent 90 percent of the dollar value of botanical sales in the United States. It also covers a number of popular Asian botanicals, providing the first English language description for many of these. Focusing on those species in high use and commonly adulterated, this book:

• Provides microscopic descriptions of the major botanicals used in herbal products

• Includes descriptions based on authenticated materials and multiple samples of each species

• Discusses the microscopic anatomy of plant parts used, whole and powdered, for each species

• Contains line drawings, microphoto images, and more than 1000 color illustrations

• Supplies a guide to microscopy resources

Contents