Botanical Accuracy: Asia

Showing posts with label Asia. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2014

Mixed herbs - a trip out in the botanical unknown

Baraka Mixed Herbs. (c) BotanicalAccuracy.com

A few days ago I found a very interesting bag of plant materials for sale in the local food market - a bag with dried plants marked MIXED herbs. It might be a herbal tea, a spice mixture, I am not sure. Looking closer I was wondering what the actual ingredients were, and looked for the ingredient label.

Baraka Mixed Herbs. (c) BotanicalAccuracy.com

And there is was: "Ingredients: Mixed herbs". But which ones? Good ones, tasty ones, toxic ones, allergen ones? There is no way to know. The photo shows sage, ox eye daisy (presumably), and a hibiscus, plus a purple-flowered Lamiaceae. You can find out that the dried plant parts are from Jordan, but not what species they are. Some of the parts look like Hibiscus flowers, but can you be sure?

Baraka Mixed Herbs Nutrition Facts and Ingredient List. (c) BotanicalAccuracy.com

Now, this is of course against any FDA rules when it comes to labeling of foods. All things that are sold that we eat has to be labeled with exact ingredients and nutrition information. So, here the customers and consumers are kept in the dark... this bag can contain exactly what is says: Mixed herbs of unknown kinds.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Wikiherbia: Anise is not the same as star anise

The website wikiherbia promotes itself as the 'complete herb database' and provides information on medicinal plants. It is in no way complete and lists only a little over 100 plants, and doesn't appear to be a very active website. However, the information is still there, and people will search for information and find this resource, so it is important that the information is as correct as possible. Unfortunately, there are some grave errors.

Screenshot of Wikiherbia web page on "anise / Pimpinella Anisum", by BotanicalAccuracy.com

The herb anise (Pimpinella anisum) is featured in wikiherbia, but not only is the Latin name wrongly formatted, but the associated image is of another species, star anise (Illicium verum). The photo on the web page shows the fruit of star anise. The text is fully focused on anise, not star anise.

Anise and star anise are unrelated plants with different chemical profiles, with the only similarity being that they both have a compound that gives a taste that is somewhat similar to licorice Anise is a temperate plant in the parsley family (Apiaceae), and star anise is a subtropical/tropical shrub in the family Schisandraceae.

This is how anise (Pimpinella anisum) looks like

(it is very similar to cilantro, same group of plants):


anise, Pimpinella anisum Public domain image, from Köhler (1887), Wikimedia

And here is star anise:

star anise, Illicium verum
Public domain image, from Köhler (1897), Wikimedia

Star anise is used for the commercial production of the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu and in Asian cooking, whereas anise is mostly used in European cooking and herbal medicine.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Greening Singapore with temperate weeds?


2013 logo for Singapore's National Park Service © Singapore National Parks, fair use.

I recently recieved an e-mail from Singapore and this nice logo above was attached to the e-mail. It celebrates 50 years of Greening Singapore by their National Parks service. I have never been to Singapore, but I have heard and read about its fantastic tropical flora and fauna, and how this country supports environmental sustainability.

The issue here are the flowers in the logo. The trees appear to be tropical trees, but the nice wildflowers in the foreground appears to be mostly temperate weeds. Maybe these are common in Singapore as well, but wouldn't you have wanted to highlight tropical flowers such as orchids, hibiscus, or maybe even some nice native wildflowers. Singapore is nearly on the equator, so about as far away you can get from our temperate flora and seasons.

The wildflowers in question appear to be (from left to right):

Close-up of logo above.

A thistle? (Cirsium?, Asteraceae) {also known as a common weed}

A hawkweed or dandelion? (Taraxacum, Crepis, Hieracium?, Asteraceae) {another weed}

An oxeeye daisy? (Leucanthemum vulgare, Asteraceae)

and...

Close-up of logo above.

a blue bell (Campanula, Campanulaceae)

These would be the kind of flowers you find in (well, maybe outside...) London, for example, and they are typical of temperate areas. I can't help wonder if the company that designed the logo just went online and picked any pretty flowers they could find, or sent out the work order to a designer without thinking about what plants that would be appropriate for this particular place. Of course there is artistic freedom, but in this case, the logo is supposed to celebrate the work of making Singapore a more green tropical city.

If any Singaporean botanists read this, please let me know what you think, because I would love to have your feedback on this.

What is Botanical Accuracy?

Would you care if someone called a cat 'a mouse' in the description of a medieval painting?

Would you care if someone served you horse meat, but said it was beef? I bet you would.

Would you care if the wrong chemical was listed in the ingredient list of your shampoo or cereal?

Would you care if you bought one plant, but got another?

Would you care if there were species or ingredient mistakes in advertising, menus, herbal pills, and such things?

Would you care if books on plants are illustrated with the wrong plants?

If so, here is the place for you to read about such problems in the world of plants and plant products, where unfortunately such mistakes, inaccuracies, and problems are not uncommon. This is usually due to lack of botanical knowledge or expertise, or sometimes because of plain ignorance.

Inaccuracies are common when it comes to plants, because it seems like we humans care to learn less about green things like trees, flowers, and herbs than we care to learn about animals, even when we eat plants, paint them, plant them, extract their chemicals, or use them in numerous other ways.

Without plants in the world you and I certainly would be dead. Some plants can also kill you with their toxins, so it is best to know which plant is what species. Time to learn some botany!

About mistakes, inaccuracies, and errors

Science is a process of gaining knowledge and understanding of the world around us. It is a never-ending process, and what we think are true facts today might change tomorrow. In science we are aiming for having the best understanding possible today based on what we and our predecessors have learned until now.

This means that what is botanically accurate from a scientific viewpoint might (and will) change. Other experts in the field of botany know a lot more about their particular research plants than I do. New scientific findings and conclusions are being published every day. This is just normal and part of the scientific process; we improve on our knowledge all the time.

The important thing is our willingness to continuously aim for botanical accuracy and the highest scientific standards in our use of names and facts. When things are wrong, let's correct them. Let us not perpetuate wrong botanical knowledge by accepting its incorrect use on commercial products, in everyday language, or in other parts of our contemporary cultures. Through scientific education and specific corrections we will improve botany and science for everybody, in supermarkets, restaurants, and garden centers.

It is the perpetuation of incorrect facts that are the problem, not the need for correction. Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody learns, throughout their lives. We need words to be able to communicate and talk about things, so let's use the right words and the right species names.

Undoubtedly there will be mistakes and errors on this blog, or things that need to be updated. If you want to get in touch, please e-mail me at botanicalaccuracy at gmail.com. If you see a mistake on this blog, e-mail me with the link to the post and an explanation what is incorrect and should be updated. If you represent a company and want to get in touch, please use the same e-mail address.