Spanish-English Medicinal Plant Names for Southwest United States and Mexico
(Emphasis on Plants of New Mexico, U.S.A. & Morelos, Mexico)
with some revisions as 12/12/2007 by Paul McKee

A supportive appendix to the summary includes the following topics:
Ancient uses; Botany and medicine; Dioscorides; Plant characters; Tree of life; Lineages and sister groups; Lineages defined; Phenetics versus cladistics; Comparative ethnopharmacology; Demonstration of comparative ethnopharmacology; Molecular information; Statistical significance; Possible shared knowledge from the remote past; Hypothesis; Database; and Primary and secondary chemicals.

Archaeologists have found plants in the graves of Neanderthals dating back over 60,000 years and they surmise that they were placed there as medicines to be taken into the afterlife. The first generally accepted use of plants as healing agents were depicted in the Cro-Magnon cave paintings discovered in Lascaux in France, which have been radiocarbon dated to between 13,000 - 25,000 BCE. Many of the herbs and spices used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds. Some of the often fragrant or spicy, essential oil rich herbs were first grown prior to 10,000 years ago, during the transition from foraging to agriculture. The oldest record of mushoom use is probably the Tassili image from cave art of Northern Algeria, dating back 3500 years B.C. This image depicts a dancing shaman with body below the head completely outlined with dozens of small outwardly radiating mushrooms. Each hand is apparently grasping four outwardly radiating mushrooms, two of which are larger than the rest. In 1991, the well preserved remains of a man who died over 5300 years ago was found in the Italian Alps. Among the possessions of this so-called "Iceman" was found a string of dried birch polyphores (the shelf fungus species Piptoporus betulinus) and another unidentified mushroom. It is known that such polypores were once widely used in Europe as tinder to start fires and as a wound medicine. A tea made by boiling the mushrooms is presently known to have immuno-enhancing properties. Many modern drugs (e.g., opium, digitalis, quinine, and the natural compound salicin, leading to aspirin) are derived from plants that were used since ancient times. Some of these plants have medicinal characters that are somewhat distinct from their wild ancestors. Such plants (e.g., Papaver somnifera, Cannibus sativa, Acorus calamus, Ocimum basilicum) have been selectively bred by very ancient cultivation. Some of these plants (that are still used today) are found growing wild only because they were able to at one time or another escape their more modern widespead cultivation.

Botany is today considered the study and science of plants for their own sake. However, historical evidence indicates that the first major attempts to study, identify, and classify plants accurately were due largely to the needs of medicine. It is also apparent that the ancient experts in "botany" of their day were originally the root diggers (ancient Greek rhizotomi), herbalists, apothecaries (early pharmacists), or physicians. In the early days, to become a healer was to also become an expert in plants. Early plant knowledge was no doubt extensive and part of oral traditions passed from healer to healer through the generations of prehistory. Such oral traditions can still to be found in some indigenous tribes throughout the world. Although there has always been a need for many different reasons to recognize (identify), carefully distinguish, and classify plants, it was medicine, through the gradual development of practical medicinal botany, that largely influenced the establishment of botany as a science. This was especially true for the establishment of botanical taxonony (science and system of naming, identifying, and classifying plants). When dealing with naming, identifying, and classifying the diverse living organisms on the planet, this science is often referred to as taxonomy or systematics, terms that are more or less synomous.

Initially, taxonony mostly involved writing descriptions and giving names for plants or other organisms. In learning to recognize plants and distinguish them from others (plant identification), overall appearance and even the specific environmental conditions in which the organisms were found could influence the names and descriptions. Other plant characteristics, such as smell, taste, other physiological responces to ingested plant material, and even influence on human or animal diseases, could be incorporated into the descriptions and have an impact on the names. As the number of names and descriptions became more numerous, there was a necessary need for placement of individual organisms into some kind of classification system. For probably thousands of years, humans have to some extent also been occupied with thinking about the relationships of organisms with other organisms. The grouping of plants on the basis of medicinal properties does not always have to be considered totally inconsistent with relationships between plants reflected by grouping on the basis of other characteristics. It was probably very early in human culture that it was recognized that similar (usually closely related) plants could often have similar medicinal properties. Historically, the grouping of plants according to medical applications seems to have dominated early attempts at plant classification. Although the use of "strickly botanical" characters of plant form and structure has often been saluted as an advancement in botanical taxonomy, botanist today that are skeptical of the ancient use of medicinal properties in plant classification should not ignore the possibility that these earlier attempts may have been at least sometimes based on a practical knowledge of medicinal chemistry, for it is currently recognized that chemical characters are often useful in plant identification and classification. The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides of the 1st century A.D. devised a relatively accurate classification system for his time by grouping plants on the basis of similarity in as many medicinal properties as possible. Most historians of science have overlooked the fact that Dioscorides had a scheme of classification, because new versions of his original work were reorganized by placing the medicinal resources in alphebetical order by name. However, a short description of this scheme is preserved in the copies of the preface of his original work Peri ulhV iatrikhV, known in Latin as De materia medica. Even though Dioscorides grouped plants on the basis of overall similarity of medicinal properties associated with folk use, many members of currently recognized families were classified together, such as the chemically distinct mints, umbels and night-shades. The system of classification of Dioscorides certainly uncovered more groups of plants currently considered valid than the earlier work of the ancient Greek Theophrastus of Eresos, who has been considered in more modern times to be the "father of botany," because he used physical ("strickly botanical") characters (rather than "medicinal" characters based on folk uses). Dioscorides even obtained relatively good results compared to most other attempts at classification up to the 16th century. This is true even though many of the later attempts often used "strickly botanical" characters. However, the significance of all this may be overlooked today because (1) Dioscorides used overall similarity (see phenetics versus cladistics) and (2) because he grouped the medicinal resources according to medicinal properties mostly derived from folk uses (potentially construed as "old wives tales"). His greatest break through and probably the factor contributing to the relatively good results in terms of a more modern understanding of plant families was, for example, the use of as many characters as possible in the classification.

As knowledge continued to grow through travel and contact of Europeans with the New World, confusion over plant names and identities in the 13th-16th centuries forshadowed what would become a growing problem in practical medicinal botany, the main precursor of the science of botany and botanical taxonony. There was need for a universal efficient system of plant naming as part of a classification system or an orderly arrangement of plants into groups on the basis of their medicinal similarities and shared physical characteristics. Standard ways of describing plants that can often be traced to ancient associations of plant forms and structures with parts of the human body are known to have become the actual name of the plant. The forms and structures as they develop from the immature to mature plant came to be referred to as plant morphology. Such forms and structures have also been referred to as the morphological characters of plants. In other words, the standard ways of characterizing the forms and structures became the physical characters; and a series of some of the key characters used for identification often became the name. Such a name could be written as a sentence in Latin. A short hand system to simplify these long complicated plant names was developed in 1753 by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. This was a system of shortened two worded names often describing the plant in Latin. Since it uses only two words to name a plant species, this system is called binomial nomenclature. These two worded names could be placed in a classifiction system of different levels. Each level is named. The level higher than species (corresponding to the genus) is named by the first word of the two worded name. Prior to Linnaeus, Joseph Pitton Tournefort was the first to group plants by genera (plural for genus). Next higher levels also have single worded names corresponding to what is now called subtribes, tribes, subfamilies, families, orders, classes, divisions or phyla, and so on. This system of named levels is called a hierarchical classification system, also considered a contribution of Carl Linnaeus. Of course, Linnaeus was also a physician. In his day, to become a physician, one was compelled to become at least somewhat of a botanist. Just a few years before his taxonomic work (called Species Plantarum), he had published Materia Medica (1749), a reference book on medicinal plants for physicians. See attempts of an earlier period to group plants according to medical properties. Although medicinal properties of plants were important to Linnaeus, there was a trend during his time and somewhat earlier to emphasize the overall similarity of morphological characters of plants as the main information used to group them in an orderly arrangement within a classification system. The hierarchical structure of levels is still used today, but it is often based (as much as possible) on a tree-like diagram representing plant genealogy that is reconstructed using more refined methods than those solely based on overall similarity of characters (see phenetics versus cladistics). Although sometimes yielding apparently favorable results in grouping plants with distinctive characteristics, overall similarity methods have often failed to provide reasonably accurate estimates of genealogy. Currently, there is an emphasis on isolating distinctive features that share a common ancestry (referred to as shared divergent or derived characters) in defining lineages and sister groups. This can be thought of as the grouping of living things on the basis of shared changes from ancestral to divergent or derived conditions due to evolution. Therefore, the branching pattern of a genealogical tree can be thought of as the pattern of divergence due to evolution. See simple examples.

There is much effort in biology (the study of life) to eventually represent all the diversity of life as a single (very large) genealogical tree. This diversity comes about through a process referred to as diversification or evolution. All organisms, living and extinct, fall into an orderly series of successively larger and larger groups subordinated to each other on the basis of similarity (particularly shared divergent characteristics). An example of such a hierarchy in animals could be humans, primates, mammals, vertebrates, etc. A common hierarchy for plants could be flowering plants (with true flowers that bear fruit), seed plants (with seeds), vascular plants (with well developed water and food conducting tissue), polysporangiophytes (with branches bearing multiple spore sacs), land plants (with embryos), streptophytes (land plants plus water inhabiting living relatives of the land plant ancestor, both of which have cell division involving a structure of minute tubules and fibers called the phragmoplast), etc. At least one shared divergent character in parentheses in the prior sentence is used to help define each named lineage (composed of a single ancestral species and all its descendants), starting (in a hierarchy) from the least inclusive groups and ending with the more inclusive ones. In using this dictionary, it would be helpful to learn the important characteristics that can be used to define these major levels of the plant hierarchy, as well as the higher level lineages for vascular plants (lycophytes and euphyllophytes). The major branches of the so-called tree of life can be referred to as higher level lineages often supported by recent DNA evidence (as well as distinctive morphological characters). See more on what is meant by lineages and sister groups. The distribution of flavonoids and tannins in various land plant groups is perhaps one of the simpliest examples of how the occurrence of naturally derived chemical compounds, some of which contribute to medicinal properties, can correspond to the broad genealogical relationships of botanical resources. Eventually students of medicinal plants may begin to uncover important correspondences between similarities in human herbal use (especially in widely separated regions of the world) and various branching arrangements on the tree of life. This will become evident especially if as many uses as possible are collectively taken into consideration (as was once done by Dioscorides). However, the more modern approach would be to show how much medicinal uses (worldwide) together with corresponding chemical and pharmacological properties collectively relate to the well supported genealogy of plants. Although all this is beyond the scope of this dictionary, there will be an attempt to collate as much as possible medicinal plant names in relationship to a basic understanding of plant genealogy. Furthermore, similarities and differences in the medicinal uses of plants or other biological resources can probably be best appreciated with the aid of a broad understanding of genealogical relationships.

A lineage can be defined as a group that must include a single ancestral species and all its descendants. These descendants may also include lineages or branches, but they must be all the branches from the same common ancestor. If only a portion of the descendants from a single ancestral species are included in defining a group, this group is called a grade or paraphyletic group. Such a group is monophyletic (with only one common ancestor), but it is not holophyletic (does not consist of all its descendants). On the tree of life, an important grade, including a step-wise sequence of branches, is sometimes singled out (e.g., the parphyletic group, collectively including only liverworts, mosses, and hornworts, called "bryophytes"). Such a group is not a true lineage, if it only includes a portion of all the descendants from a common ancestor, even though each of its step-wise branches may themselves be considered lineages. For example, the liverworts, mosses, and hornworts without a vascular system (well developed water and food conducting system) represent living members of the earliest step-wise sequence of branches of plants that produce an embryo. Although each individual branch of this step-wise sequence can be considered a lineage, all three branches taken together do not constitute a lineage, because other plants with a vascular system that belong to the same embryo producing ancestry are not included. Plants with a vascular system that do not produce seeds do not constitute a lineage, because other plants with seeds that belong to the same vascular system producing ancestry are not included. Sometimes grades are defined, because for various reasons all the living descendants from an ancestral species are not yet recognized. Two overlapping step-wise sequences of branches at the base of the fungi tree of life are undoubtedly grades, but they are still often considered taxonomic groups, because authorities are not yet sure how to divide them up properly into valid lineages. Such problems arises when the arrangement of branches in certain portions of the tree is not yet well defined. If a defined group is later found to have more than one unrelated common ancestor, it is also not a lineage. Such a collection of organisms with more than one unrelated ancestor is called a polyphyletic group, because it comprises more than one unrelated lineage. An understanding of what is meant by "sister groups" can be very useful for describing the arrangement of the branches (lineages) on the tree of life. Sister groups simply refer to two lineages or two species, that together form a lineage. Of course, a sublineage is a lineage contained within a more inclusive lineage.

In order to define a lineage, there is a need to focus on the changes or divergences from ancestral conditions. This can be thought of as the grouping of living things on the basis of shared changes from ancestral to divergent or derived conditions due to evolution, as stated at the end of the paragraph on the brief history of medicinal botany. An ancestral condition refers to a feature or character of the ancestor of a group. Homologous characters (features with a common ancestry) can be represented by a change from a primitive (often simplier) state to a more advanced or derived (often more elaborate) state. These differences, due to changes with a common ancestry, represent two or more states of the same character; thus, they are called character states, which can, for example, be coded 0,1 or 0,1,2,3, where the lower numbers represent more primitive states and the higher numbers more advanced or derived states. The successive increase in these numbers can be thought of as steps in evolution. The shared derived character states are used to help define the lineages and not the ancestral conditions prior to the changes. If aquatic (fresh water inhabiting) relatives led to land inhabiting ones, the land plant lineage is defined by some shared unique character (e.g., the embryo), found in all land plants but not in the aquatic ones. The so-called "non-embryo producing plants" (algae), "non-vascular land plants" (living liverworts + mosses + hornworts without well developed vascular or water and food conducting tissue), "non-seed vascular plants" (any vascular plant with water and food conducting tissue and without seeds), and "non-flowering seed plants" (any seed plant without fruits) are defined by the absence of one or more changes; and, therefore, they may not be lineages, because they represent the ancestral condition before the changes took place. Plants in these "non-lineage" groups will sometimes be featured together to help contrast the ancestral condition from the changes that took place in true lineages, but it is the lineages that help to accurately pinpoint the nature of a particular type of plant. Sometimes a "non-group" name can represent a lineage (e.g., non-lycophyte vascular plants for the euphyllophytes), if this group can be defined by shared changes. In this case, before lycophytes (today represented by club mosses, spike mosses, and quill worts) and euphyllophytes (today repesented by ferns, horsetails, and seed and flowering plants) became separate sister lineages, the ancestor of both groups had dichotomous branching (branches successively forked in groups of two with no single main stem). This ancestral condition was retained in all of the earliest lycophytes and was only modified later within this lineage. However, the earliest euphyllophytes already represented a change from dichotomous branching to overtopping (ancestrally one long main stem and shorter side branches). In the ancestor of both lycophytes and euphyllophytes, the spore sacs were located at the tips of dichotomous branches. Although euphyllophytes did not have dichotomous branches, the earliest members of this group retained the ancestral terminal spore sacs (on the tips of branches). This ancestral condition was only modified later within the lineage. However, the earliest lycophytes already represented a change from terminal spore sacs to lateral ones (those arising from the sides of branches). Therefore, the lineage of lycophytes can be characterized by lateral spore sacs, while the lineage of euphyllophytes are ancestrally distinguished by overtopping of branches. The definition of these two lineages is not based on the presence of most primitive character states (e.g., dichotomous branching or terminal spore sacs). All presently living non-flowering seed plants and the flowering plants also appear (on the basis of DNA) to be a sister lineages. However, it is presently difficult to find a single, easily observable shared derived character state that distinguishes presently living non-flowering seed plants from all other lineages, including true flowering plants; and non-flowering seed plant fossils may evidentually be discovered that represent an ancestral line from which true flowering plants have originated.

The lineages are often given special names to emphasize their importance (e.g., polysporangiophytes for those that first had dichotomous branching, representing a change from unbranched land plants with a single spore sac to branched plants with multiple spore sacs). The "unbranched land plants with a single spore sac" (representing the ancestral condition) is not a lineage, but those respresenting the change to branched plants with multiple spore sacs is a lineage that paved the way for new innovations in the major sublineages of vascular plants (those with well developed water and food conducting tissue, including lycophytes and euphyllophytes). Often a plant can be diagnosed as a mixture of retained (primitive) characters that have not changed versus derived characters that have changed from the ancestral condition. In order to ensure that this plant gets placed in a lineage, it is grouped with other plants only on the basis of shared derived (advanced) characters, and not on the basis of the shared retained (primitive) characters. One major reason why overall similarity methods often do not work very well is because these methods group plants on the basis of all shared characters [including not only derived (advanced) but also retained (primitive) ones]. The derivation of genealogical relationships (often simply called genealogy) within or between lineages is also more effectively done by grouping plants on the basis of shared changes from ancestral conditions. Problems can also result from grouping on the basis of overall similarity of derived or divergent character changes, because the derived character changes may arise from different ancestral conditions (from different, unrelated origins). Each type of derived character change must represent homologous character states (that arise from a corresponding ancestral condition); and this type of derived character change must not be considered the same as one that only appears similar but is the result of changes that are nonhomologous (from different unrelated ancestral conditions). If characters of shared changes from corresponding (related) ancestral conditions are easily recognized, these diagnostic characters can help in placing a plant in its appropriate lineage, and the identification of this plant becomes greatly simplified. The less reliable overall similarity methods are now called phenetic methods, while the more reliable grouping of organisms based on shared changes from corresponding ancestral conditions is referred to as cladistic methods. Of course, the responsibility of doing all this correctly or reliably is not completely left to the readers. They are introduced to diagnostic characters based on the labors and concensus of various authorities. Familiarity with often simple diagnostic characters of lineages (shared changes from corresponding ancestral conditions used to define lineages) becomes basic to proper plant identification. Therefore, before a bit more detail on the major lineages is introduced, the the reader is provided information on some of the basic defining features for the land plant groups, particularly the most common ones.

Even though there are now much more sophisticated methods of determinating relationships between plants, the cruder overall similarity methods have sometimes yielded sufficiently reasonable results in the past to help define many currently accepted plant families and other groups. For example, the complicated convention of John Ray (1628-1705) that used the overall similarity of as many different morphological characters as possible paved the way for the better system of Antoine L. de Jussieu (1748-1836), who defined many of the families that are still recognized today. This is not to suggest that we should re-adopt phenetic methods as a major approach in taxonomy. However, due to the recent introduction of more reliable (although not always conclusive) cladistic methods, some biologist have become over jealous in criticizing anyone that uses alternative approaches; and the cruder methods of the past that have often yielded relatively reasonable results (e.g., those of Dioscorides or de Jussieu) should not be dismissed as totally invalid just because they employed overall similarity. Nevertheless, only relatively consistent results from the "state of the art" or currently approved methods are included in this work. These are genealogical trees already constructed by reputable experts using the more reliable methods (involving mostly DNA). Such trees are employed as a frame of reference in the study of the forms and structures and the medicinal properties of lineages, including many that contain the plants bearing the names featured in this dictionary. The more detailed genealogies derived from the cladistic analysis of DNA of multiple genes are what is required to provide a sounder basis for comparative ethnopharmacology.

Since 1988, I have stressed that comparative ethnopharmacology, involving studies of the genealogical distribution of correlations between known chemistry, activity, and folk use, could vastly improve the ability to make predictions and even aid marketably in the discovery or re-discovery of useful medicinal agents. Using methods based on overall similarity of derived characters, an attempt to introduce the vast potential of this approach was made in Gottlieb, O. R. & Stefanello, M. E. A. (1991) Comparative ethnopharmacology: a rational method for the search of bioactive compounds in plants, Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ci�ncias, v. 63, p. 23-31. Is it a coincidence that these authors used the same name for a field of study that I attempted to introduce three years earlier? Although these authors were in my estimation generally on the right tract, comparative ethnopharmacology should be defined as the integration and comparison of cross-cultural (worldwide) folk medicinal uses, pharmacological activities, and active chemical compounds on the basis of the evolutionary relationships of plants or other biological resources. This implies the use of strict genealogy (not just overall similarity of divergent characters) as a basis for comparison. A more concise definition could be simply the study of the distribution of medicinal properties on the basis of living resource genealogical relationships. Sound methods of reconstucting genealogical relationships (using DNA sequences or other useful sources of information) should provide the basis of this comparative approach. Despite all this time, it is apparent that scientists are only gradually attempting to break the ice to pave the way for such an important approach. Due to an increased understanding of the genealogy of plants, these type studies, involving a very few activities, are only gradually and recently surfacing in the worldwide literature (e.g., http://www.rrreading.com/files/Thesis%208.pdf and http://www.biomed.ki.se/kurser/examarb/exjobbpres/christoffer_nellaker.pdf). In terms of published material, the study of the distribution of folk uses according to the genealogy of plants is only barely getting started (e.g., Journal Ethnopharmacology 103(1): 1-24, 2006). Some Chinese researchers (e.g., Pei-Gen Xiao, Yong Peng, Feng-Peng Wang, Feng Gao, Lu-Ping Yan, Dong-Lin Chen, Si-Bao Chen, Yong Liu) have recently (2006) introduced what they call pharmacophylogeny. The terms "phylogeny" (adj. phylogenetic) and "genealogy" (adj. genealogical) are more or less equivalent. Under the direction of Professor Peigen Xiao, the studient Lijia Xu worked (from 2001 to 2006) on pharmacophylogenetic research of flowering plant family Schisandraceae. Pharmacophylogenetic studies have been done on other flowering plant groups, such as the subfamily Isopyroideae (e.g., genus Isopyrum) of the family Ranunculaceae (2006), preliminarily for the entire Ranunculaceae (2006), the genus Aconitum of Ranunculaceae (2006), the entire family Berberidaceae (2006), and the genus Fritillaria of family Liliaceae (2007). These studies (all written in Chinese) involve the correlation between plant genealogy, chemical constituents, and pharmaceutical information (including ethnopharmacological uses from the point of view of traditional Chinese medicine). Such studies apparently also provide support for taxonomic issues (involving the classification of plants). The Chinese pharmaphylogenetic studies (as well as a South African 2006 study of the family Menispermaceae by Helene De Wet) often attempt to integrate chemical, pharmacological, and folk use data implicitly from a genealogical perspective, but apparently they do not usually employ an initial genealogy (e.g., one or more independent studies based on separate molecular information) as a main frame of reference for such data integration, rendering these attempts somewhat incomplete in terms of the standards of comparative ethnopharmacology. An attempt to integrate published genealogies (often derived form molecular information) on flowering plants is currently underway by Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards) Angiosperm Phylogeny Website (http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/). This attempt also includies many chemical and morphological characters. Eventually, the integration of genealogies from many independently published studies could also be attempted by using TreeBASE (http://www.treebase.org/treebase/index.html).

As a goal, my approach has been to focus on particular lineages, involving the correlation between information mostly obtained from the literature on plant genealogy, chemical constituents, tested pharmacological activities, and worldwide medicinal uses. Ideally, my goal has been to demonstrate for the first time a correspondence between the collective distribution of folk uses and the genealogical relationships of medicinal plants. This demonstration could become more managable by focusing worldwide on correlating uses, especially in independent geographical regions (as well as those uses that strongly correlate with tested pharmacological activities), of closely related plants, emphasizing relatively small, well defined lineages. This would involve the demonstration that the distribution of such uses is not random but corresponds with a reasonable degree of statistical significance to the genealogical relationships of the medicinal plants (due to plant genotypes -> plant phenotypes -> human physiological responce to plant materials -> medicinal properties). The value of comparative ethnopharmacology is not yet widely supported by such demonstrations (see next paragraph).

Although scientific revolutions are happening at an accelerated rate in the new millenium, some potentially important approaches to science are progressing very slowly and with many constraits. The chemical characters of plants have been used to unravel issues in taxonomy for about 100 years (e.g., use of chemical taxonomy applied to classification), and indirectly through the use of odors, tastes, and preceived medicinal properties for much longer (Judd, W. S., et al., 2007). It is possible that some of the oldest flowering plant family names that correspond to our modern understanding of genealogy were originally formulated on the basis of ancient preceived medicinal properties associated with folk uses. Within the Herbae Umbelliferae (old name for the parsley family), as well as in the Herbae Cruciferae (old name for the mustart family) and Herbae Labiatae (old name for the mint family), it was noted (possibly since ancient times) that similar species "have the like virtues and tendency to work the same effects" (from a 1699 commentary by James Petiver, an English botanist and apothecary). How old are these old family names? The relatively favorable results of the medicinal classification of Dioscorides may point to the possibility that the pharmaceutically rich groups, such as the mints, umbels, mustarts, and (especially) the night-shades, more or less recovered in his system, could have been some of the families recognized since ancient times that are still valid today. The listing of some plants with similar medicinal properties next to each other in the herbal of Dioscorides provides evidence that he recognised certain familiar natural groups, such as the labiate genera (mint family), the crucifers (mustart family), the legumes (bean family), the umbelliferous plants (parsley family), the composites (sunflower family) and the solanaceous plants (night-shade family). The ancient contribution of Dioscorides (although widely misunderstood in his day as presently) might crudely foreshadow by 2000 years Chinese pharmacophylogeny or my proposed comparative ethnopharmacology. This more modern but equally revolutionary perspective could apply genealogy to integrate worldwide information on medicinal organisms inorder to unravel many mysteries in traditional medicine. The more modern genealogical approach (apparently also still misunderstood by a number of "pure" botanists) may even provide the means of uncovering some of the lost and forgotten medicinal heritage of the remote past. However, such an approach will apparently only become widely acceptable by pursuing it one small piece at a time. Such a piece might include the medicinal uses of a small and not well understood family of flowering plants. A recent attempt by Norman A. Douglas to reconstruct the genealogy of the Four O'Clock family of flowering plants on the basis of DNA characters is already in preperation at Duke University (a main part of this study has already been published). Once a well supported DNA genealogy for this small but cryptic family becomes available, I hope to show how methods of comparative ethnopharmacology can demonstrate a statistically significant correspondence between the distribution of folk uses and genealogical relationships. It is likely that I just so happen to possess sufficient folk medicinal use data to pull this off. However, the task can become a possibility only when a well supported DNA genealogy of the family becomes available. As early as 1990, Djaja D. Soejarto (Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy and then Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Ethnopharmacology) stated that my work "may indeed pave the way for a new form of comparative ethnopharmacology." He added: "Of course, the validity of your novel approach and its acceptance as a method to adopt will depend on the consistency of the results that will be generated by this method for other plant groups (families)." Nevertheless (in the mean time), it is proposed here that one of the best ways to help preserve our global medicinal heritage is to attempt to integrate it according to the branching of medicinal resource lineages. This is because medicinal resource knowledge is likely to statisically hold together best when unified according to the resource genealogical tree of life. Within the domain of comparative ethnopharmacology and on the basis of genealogy, the classification, identification, and the act of uncovering medically interesting and even useful properties in plants can again (as in the traditional healing of the past) become overlapping and mutually supportive processes.