Features

Summary

This fourth volume of The Cross Name Index to Medicinal Plants lists more than 12,000 common names in 100 languages, dialects and regions for over 1900 plants used in Indian medicine. Both scientific and common names of medicinal plants are cross indexed to each other. Languages of the common names are included.
The Cross Name Index to Medicinal Plants, Volume IV, stands alone; it does not repeat any of the common names of the previous volumes and it references all scientific names for the plants without recourse to the previous volumes.
The need for this book was prompted by the diversity of the common names of the plants. Each language, and sometimes each country with the same language, may have a different name for a given plant (and often many names for the same plant). This difference in terminology has caused confusion and inhibited the scientific study of plant medicinals.
This volume was compiled as a tool to help unravel the medical botany literature and to aid researchers in their quest to tap into the vast literature which records pragmatic experimentation in botanical medicine, whether medical, folkloric or magical.