MPNS FAQs

You can search for any name that you might find in a medicinal plant reference. It could be:

• a scientific name – a species, a genus or even just a specific epithet (the species name without the genus)
• a pharmaceutical or drug name - including Chinese (pinyin) and Ayurvedic names
• a common name

The search term must be at least three characters long.

Wildcard searches allow for variation in spelling: simply use an asterisk ‘*’ or question mark ‘?’ in place of letters:

• * matches zero or more letters
• ? matches only one letter

MPNS currently only covers flowering plants and ferns (vascular plants).

It does not record names of mosses (bryophytes), algae, fungi, or lichen although we may include some of these other groups in the future.

All plants included in the MPNS Resource have been cited as having medicinal use in at least one of the references covered by MPNS.

References currently represented within the MPNS Resource

Please note that:

• species which are not themselves explicitly cited as having a medicinal use but which contain infraspecies which are cited as being medicinal are also included in MPNS.
• ALL infraspecies belonging to a species cited as having medicinal use are also included even if not explicitly cited in the medicinal literature. The intention is to enable users to review the evidence for each subspecies or variety of that species.

MPNS make no claims that a plant has medicinal properties, simply that the references cited state this. Inclusion of a plant name in the MPNS Resource should not be taken as an endorsement of any medicinal use or efficacy.

Plants considered to have medicinal use may well be absent from MPNS because our Resource does not yet include a reference indicating this medicinal use. New references continue to be added to MPNS and we seek suggestions of significant and more reliable references for future inclusion. At present we are only collecting names of vascular plants.

Plant names of any kind that are stored in MPNS and that match your search term can be viewed under each of the expandable results links: one for each type of plant name.

If you do not see what you are looking for it may be because:

• The name that you are looking for may appear under one of the other headings. For example, if you searched “chamomil”, then closely matched names will appear under their corresponding headings. For example the common names “chamomile’ and ‘camomille’ will appear under ‘Common or Pharmaceutical names’ and scientific names with the genus ‘Chamomilla’ will appear under both ‘Scientific names as used in medicinal plant references’ and ‘Scientific names found in Kew’s taxonomic resources’. You might also prefer to click ‘View all records relating to your search in a combined display’ to view a table of all matches that can be filtered.
• You searched for a scientific name that is now considered to be a synonym. Look for the name under the ‘Scientific names as used in medicinal plant references’ link. If it isn’t there select each Accepted scientific name in turn and look under the ‘Scientific synonyms’ tab, or check under the ‘View all records relating to your search in a combined display’ link.
• You have limited your search to either scientific or non-scientific names using the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. Try your search again with ‘All Names’ selected.
• You have spelt the name differently to the way that it is spelt in the original reference(s) cited and thus as it is spelt in the MPNS Resource. This possibility is minimised by the fuzzy matching employed by the portal.
• Your list returns so many results that you cannot see the name you are looking for. Try narrowing your search by typing in a more precise term or by using the filters under ‘View all records relating to your search in a combined display’.
• The medicinal plant you are searching for is genuinely not cited in any of the medicinal references covered by MPNS to date (see ‘What should I do if my plant is not yet included in MPNS?’ below).

If the plant that you are looking for is genuinely not covered by any of the medicinal references covered by MPNS to date, then we would welcome your suggestions for inclusion and the reference source(s) that you propose we include. To find out how to contact MPNS please refer to details at the foot of this page.

For your immediate use there are other taxonomic resources available which cover a wider range of plants and aim to resolve questions you may have about the scientific nomenclature of those plants.

Three taxonomic resources which you can use (and the order in which to use them) are outlined under How is the Accepted name chosen?

Names in Roman script are recorded from publications regardless of the language of that name. Many names in languages employing other scripts such as Chinese, Arabic or Sinhala are recorded as they appear in the original publication. We aim to increase the number of non-Roman names included. For a very few scripts we are constrained by the current lack of reliable computer codes to represent those characters.

MPNS recognises a number of different classes of medicinal plant name. Whilst it is possible to search the MPNS portal using names belonging to any of these classes, the results displayed may vary according to the class of name that you use. The classes of name recognised by MPNS are:

Scientific names

These names are formally published according to strict rules to ensure that a single name can always be referred back to a description and a physical plant ‘type’ specimen (herbarium voucher) for verification of the intended species or infraspecies. The meaning of a Scientific name is therefore fixed (tied forever to the identity, DNA and chemistry of the original type specimen(s)). In contrast, names from all other categories may be used by different people to refer to more than one plant, or change in meaning over time, with no means of clarifying which is the plant that was intended. See also: How are scientific names formed?

Scientific names have a taxonomic status which can change as taxonomists review the relationships between plants. The main taxonomic status types are ‘Accepted’ and ‘Synonym’:

• Accepted name: This is the scientific name currently judged by taxonomists to be the correct name for a given plant. It is the most reliable name to use for a plant, but the accepted name can change if, for example, a plant in one genus is moved to another genus following DNA analysis that shows the plant to be more closely related to that group. The plant then needs a new name to be published and the currently accepted name becomes a synonym. See also: How is the Accepted name chosen?
• Scientific synonyms: All properly published scientific names which are not currently recognised as accepted are synonyms. Although these are not the currently accepted name for the plant, they still link to a formal publication and specimen and can be traced to the accepted name and so are reliable, but may not link to up-to-date information about the plant.

MPNS also recognises another class of name: ‘Scientific names as used in medicinal plant references’. See What are ‘Scientific names as used in medicinal plant references'.

Non-scientific names

All names for plants used in the medicinal plant literature are captured by MPNS. The types of non-scientific names included are:

• Pharmaceutical names: Commonly used in pharmacopoeias, e.g. ‘Panacis Quinquefolii Radix’. Be aware that some pharmaceutical names are written in Latin and appear as binomials, but are not scientific plant names and may be associated with more than one plant.
• Common, drug, Pinyin and other names: regardless of the script employed e.g. ‘American ginseng’, ‘サンヤク’.

Scientific names are written in Latin and use a standardised binomial form. All species have a scientific name including a genus, species and author citation indicating the person or people who published that name, in a standardised abbreviated form.

Example: Panax (genus) + quinquefolius (species epithet) + L. (author: Linnaeus)

Full species name: Panax quinquefolius L.

The names of infraspecies (e.g. varieties or subspecies) will include additional components indicating that the plant is a subset of a species. These are placed after the main part of the name and are formed of a rank (e.g. var. meaning variety), infraspecific epithet, and author citation for the full infraspecific name.

Example: Panax quinquefolius L.

+ var. (rank) + americanus (infraspecific epithet) + Raf. (author: Rafinesque)

Full infraspecific name: Panax quinquefolius L. var. americanus Raf.

NB: This format is necessary but not sufficient for a name to be considered a scientific plant name. See definition for ‘scientific names’ under What are the different name types/categories recognised by MPNS?

‘Scientific names as used in medicinal plant references’ are those scientific names cited in a medicinal plant reference, exactly as they are spelt in that publication, including any misspellings, abbreviations or variations.

All ‘scientific names as used in medicinal plant references’ are linked by MPNS to the corresponding scientific name in Kew’s taxonomic resources and consequently, where possible, to the accepted scientific name of that plant. On rare occasions it has not been possible to make this link and the ‘Accepted scientific name’ in these instances reads ‘Awaiting MPNS review’.

A number of taxonomic databases for scientific plant names already exist covering different subsets of plants and each with a slightly different purpose and audience. Each of these databases connects a given scientific name with what is considered the taxonomically correct or 'accepted' name at that time.

Many of these databases are actively maintained by scientific institutions, such as Kew, and these require the input of plant taxonomists worldwide to keep abreast of new plants and new research about the systematic relationships among known plants. 10,000 changes to plant names are published in the scientific literature every year.

MPNS follows the taxonomic and nomenclatural decisions recorded in The World Checklist of Vascular Plants.

This resource has been developed over the last 18 years at Kew with guidance and advice from more than 150 botanical specialists worldwide. It contains worldwide species lists for each plant family. For all species in any of the included families, one can discover geographical distribution and full scientific synonymy, i.e. cross references to all of the scientific names for each plant (except misapplied and invalid names).

The taxonomy embedded within the World Checklist (from both peer-reviewed and in-review data) is visible via Plants of the World Online.

Studies of plant systematic relationships are ongoing and modern data derived from chemical or molecular (DNA) studies continue to lead to improvements in our understanding of evolutionary relationships. As a consequence of this the scientific names for these plants undergo surprisingly frequent changes. A species may be moved from one genus to another, for example, or two or more species may be merged into one species, or a single species may now be recognised as several species. The degree to which botanists understand these relationships at a global level can vary significantly between one family and another, but each of these taxonomic realignments changes the names of one or more species.

Every year 10,000 changes are published regarding the names of vascular plants: 2,000 species are discovered (new names), 4,000 species are moved from one genus to another (name changes) and 4,000 species are either split or merged (warranting multiple name changes).

Given this rate of change, MPNS seeks to provide the most up-to-date and authoritative taxonomy available for the medicinal plants included, which may include changes to the Accepted name of a plant from one version to the next. We base our taxonomy upon decisions recorded in The World Checklist of Vascular Plants which has been developed over the last 18 years at Kew with guidance and advice from more than 150 botanical specialists worldwide. (See also: How is the Accepted name chosen?). It is actively curated to reflect taxonomic changes as described above.

Each release of the MPNS Resource is refreshed to reflect an up-to-date snapshot of the WCVP taxonomy at the point of publication. MPNS also actively supports the compilation and correction of names and taxonomy of medicinal plants in WCVP.

Each Version of the MPNS Resources thus has a static reliable taxonomy that you can cite. Subsequent releases of MPNS will reflect a) increased richness of medicinal plant data – as we include a growing number of medicinal plant references, and b) improvements in taxonomic understanding in WCVP.