The story of the superfluous drumstick tree species

Just tonight I was looking through the most recent catalogue from LUSH, the novelty-loving skincare company from Canada, and botanical accuratist as I am, I was scanning the ingredient lists at the end of the catalogue. This is always interesting, you never know what you might find! Here is an example of the lists can look like:

One of many pages in the LUSH catalogue, listing the ingredients to their products according to the INCI database. Photo by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

All skincare ingredients follow the standardized INCI database naming system, so that all ingredients follow a particular format and have a standardized name.  INCI is managed by the Personal Products Care Council who are in the process of updating scientific names that have become outdated or changed.

One of the names I found was MORINGA OIL (MORINGA PTERYGOSPERMA) from the medicinal moringa plant in the family Moringaceae, not too distant from the cabbage family (Brassicaceae). 

Drumstick tree (Moringa oleifera) from Francisco Manuel Blanco's (1880-1883?) Flora de Filipinas, Public Domain.

There is an excellent explanation on why Moringa pterygosperma is a name that should no longer be used on a web page by Mark E. Olson, as part of the Moringa International Germplasm Collection's Moringa Blog. In the blog post the fascinating story of how the two moringa species were discovered, described, and how one name (Moringa pterygosperma) turned out to be the same as another name (Moringa oleifera). Unfortunately both names are still in use today. If you read all the way to the end (while passing by exquisite drawings from the old original botanical works), you will get to the conclusion by Mark E. Olson:

"The summary of this story is that Moringa pterygosperma is a superfluous name for Moringa oleifera. It is the result of an oversight of an ambitious 18th century botanist who was working himself to exhaustion in a race against blindness. Whatever the cause, there is no reason at all ever to use the name Moringa pterygosperma. "

So, this means that every label on a skincare product that currently lists Moringa pterygosperma as an ingredient, should change that scientific name to Moringa oleifera. This will take some time to change, but this is how scientific progress looks like in biodiversity and speciation studies.  And don't buy Moringa pterygosperma thinking it is a better product than something with Moringa oleifera - the two names are the same thing.

New York State goes after mislabeled herbal supplements

Big news in the herbal supplement world today: Four large US companies are told to stop selling mislabeled herbal supplements after DNA barcoding analysis of herbal ingredients. More below...

"New York Attorney General Targets Supplements at Major Retailers",
front page news on The New York Times, Feb 3, 2015
(screenshot from NYTimes.com's homepage by BotanicalAccuracy.com)

New York Attorney General has told four major US retail firms that sells herbal supplements to remove these from their shelves or they will face legal action.  This after the AG office tested herbal supplements bought at GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart and found that many of the sold products did not contain what they were sold as, and in some cases, contained undisclosed 'fillers' that could cause severe allergies (such as wheat and beans, etc.).  Here is the story in The New York Times this morning, and the associated article on the scientific findings. Fascinating reading, including the lack of garlic in garlic supplements, and the addition of pine shoots, asparagus, and a multitude of other plant species.

"What's in Those Supplements?", in The New York Times, Feb 3, 2015
(screenshot from NYTimes.com by BotanicalAccuracy.com)

"The authorities said they had run tests on popular store brands of herbal supplements at the retailers — Walmart, Walgreens, Target and GNC — which showed that roughly four out of five of the products contained none of the herbs listed on their labels. In many cases, the authorities said, the supplements contained little more than cheap fillers like rice and house plants, or substances that could be hazardous to people with food allergies. " (source)

It is about time.  Most people are probably unaware that the quality control of herbal supplements are in the hands of the suppliers, and FDA that oversees this market has not had the legal and financial tools to follow up on potentially fraudulent cases. Scientists have been testing herbal supplements, sushi fish, and herbal teas, etc., for quite some time and often found that labels did not match the content when it comes to species.  Often expensive ingredients were missing and replaced with cheaper ones.  But these scientists could not take action against the companies that inadvertently or on purpose changed their product and sold the wrong ingredients.  But now New York State's Attorney General took action. Hopefully this will start to clean up the herbal industry and help the suppliers that use quality-control, efficacy, and consumer safety as their main goals.

Adulteration, the introduction of, or replacement with, ingredients that are not listed on the label, is a serious issue, and can be caused by poor quality control at the source of the plant material (mislabeled or misidentified plants, etc.), and/or by on-purpose replacement of one ingredient with another without telling the consumer (often for economical reasons).  This is of course both fraudulent and dangerous, since many people have allergies and need to know exactly what they add to their diet.  Additionally, selling the wrong thing is a giant consumer fraud.


But, keep in mind, medicinal herbal science is really based on active ingredients, and these are often particular chemical compounds.  The main issues are if these sold herbal supplements contain both the correct species (the source and origin of the chemical compounds) and the active ingredients from those plants.  Not enough research is done on many of the chemicals in plants and their efficacy, but plants in general are powerful natural chemical factories that produce both compounds that can both help your body and kill you.  That is why it is important to know both the origin of the materials in the supplements and the concentration of active ingredients.

The method used in the analysis of these supplements is DNA barcoding.  It only works for supplements that still contain DNA from the original plant material, so for example bark, seeds, leaves, fruits, even in dried form.  It doesn't work after you have extracted only specific chemicals from a plant.  But many supplements are simply dried plant powder in capsules.  DNA barcoding means that you sequence one of several small pieces of the DNA of a plant and compare it to a big database that contains most plant species used in herbal medicine.  This database is growing each day as more and more sequences are added and can be analyzed.  Similarly, if you know the DNA barcode of a species you are looking for, you can test and see if your supplement contains this species. DNA barcoding is not a method without some problems, but used scientifically it is the best method around to identify pulverized or dried plant materials to species.  It is also used to identify unknown woods, meats, caviar, pathogenic fungi, and many other materials and organisms.
 
The result of this DNA testing by the AG office is not a test of the value and efficacy of herbal medicine in general or for any specific herbal species. The focus here is how much adulteration of ingredients that is going on in the mass-production of herbal supplements, so it is really a test of the self-regulation of the herbal industry. The AG office of New York State is going after commercial fraud, not the scientific value of herbal medicine, which is a very different topic and maybe something for another blogpost.

Some more reading for those of you that want to learn more about this topic:

American Botanical Council's Botanical Adulterants Program

"DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products", article by Newmaster et al., in BMC medicine, 2013 (see review and critique from ABC here)

Smithsonian research with DNA barcoding is making seafood substitution easier to catch, Smithsonian Science, 2011

'International Regulation Curbs Illegal Trade of Caviar', press release from American Museum of Natural History showing the decline of illegal caviar after DNA testing was put in place, 2012

Chamomile, what flower is on your tea box?

What do you think - does this chamomile tea box from STASH show chamomile flowers or something else?
  The medicinal plant chamomile has been used since ancient times for medicinal uses, especially as a calming and sleep inducing tea.  Chamomile is usually one of two similar-looking species, Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) or the more common German or wild chamomile  (Matricaria chamomilla). These species have many common names and also many scientific synonymous names, so I am listing some of them below.

So, what is the problem?  Well, there are many species in the sunflower family that look like white daisies with a yellow center, like both of the chamomiles have. So the companies that make chamomile tea packaging seems to have a horrible time putting the right species on the box.  Even worse is the stock photo market where a lot of 'chamomile tea' photos show something totally different than one of the two chamomile species.

Why does this matter?  Even if plants are similar in shape and color, they can have different chemistry.  Many times an edible plant may have a toxic look-alike.  If companies can't even bother putting the right plant on the label, can you trust them to check what is really in that bulk sample of dried leaves and flowers they are selling and want you to steep and drink and then sleep calmly on?  Maybe not... 

So, how does the two true chamomile species look like? First, the 'flower' of a chamomile is a whole flower head.  It is a member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae, and just like its relative the sunflower in each flower head there is a circle of outer small ray flowers (white), and in the flat center is an area of disk flowers (yellow) that look like small yellow tubes.

Here is German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla, some older names are Chamomilla chamomilla, Chamomilla recutita,  Matricaria recutita and Matricaria suaveolens):

German chamomile.
Photo by kallerna on Wikipedia, Creative Commons license.

German chamomile, in Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen on Wikimedia, public domain.

Note how the leaves of German chamomile are divided into many narrow segments, and how the flower head is hollow and uplifted in the center with age, and how the white ray flowers along edge becomes vertically pointed downwards with age.

Here is Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), a very similar species that previously has been called Anthemis nobilis.

Roman chamomile, in Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen on Wikimedia, public domain. 

The Roman chamomile also have finely dissected leaves and a central part of the flower head that is lifted up.

The most common mixup when it comes to photos and other illustrations of chamomile is with the oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare. It has very different leaves that are whole and with a serrate edge.  The flower heads are flatter and the ray flowers are a lot larger and longer.  This species is also often unbranched or just branched from the base, but Roman and German chamomile are often very much branched.

Ox-eye daisy, from Lindman's flora, now in the public domain.

Fleabane is another species you see mixed up with chamomile sometimes.  It has many, many more ray flowers and each white ray is a lot narrower than a chamomile or ox-eye daisy.

Fleabane, Erigeron annuus, with a branched inflorescence, whole leaves, and flower heads with many, many white ray flowers. Photo by Enrico Blasutto on Wikimedia, Creative Commons license.

The easiest way to tell these species apart is to look at the flowers in the flower head and the leaf shape - here is an overview of the good characters to tell them all apart:

Common name	German chamomile	Roman chamomile	oxeye daisy	fleabane
Accepted name	Matricaria chamomilla	Chamaemelum nobile	Leucanthemum vulgare	Erigeron sp.
Older names	Matricaria recutita	Anthemis nobilis	Chrysanthemum leucanthemum	Erigeron annuus and E. strigosus are common species)
Leaf type on stem	finely dissected into small, long narrow lobes, fern-like	finely dissected into small, long narrow lobes, fern-like	simple, whole leaves wider towards the apex, edges with irregular teeth, leaves clasping stem	whole, lance-shaped to oblong, with serrate edge
Flower heads per plant	ca. 8–120 per plant, stem heavily branched	ca. 3-20 per plant, branches many	ca. 1-10, branches few and flower heads long-stalked	5–50+ per plant, branches many
Number of white ray flowers per head	ca. (10-)14-26	ca. 13–21	ca. 13–34	ca. 80–125, very thin and narrow
Ray (white) flowers on old flower heads	bending down under the flower head	bending down under the flower head	spread outwards, horizontal, sometimes downwards (wilted look)	spread outwards, horizontal, or coiling upwards
Yellow center in middle of flower head (= all disk flowers)	raised like a dome	raised like a dome	flat or sunken inwards	flat or slightly dome-shaped, often slightly sunken in center

So, who got it wrong and needs to fix their packaging illustrations? 

Royal herbal tea infusions show oxeye daisy on their chamomile tea. 

Stash's non-organic chamomile tea unfortunately shows a fleabane plant. Flea bane has been used for, you guessed it, remove fleas and other parasites on our bodies and clothes. Photo by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

Do any teaboxes show the right chamomile?  

Alvita Chamomile tea box with real chamomile on it.

Stash's organic chamomile tea shows nice real chamomile on it.

Traditional Medicinals also gets it right with their organic Chamomile tea.  Here is the right thing.

And then we have the world of stock photo inaccuracies, which seems to be a never-ending subject.  The lack of quality control of stock photos is rather astounding.

Dreamstime is selling two photos labeled as 'Cup of herbal tea with chamomile flowers'. Sorry, that is ox-eye flowers. Screenshot by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

And then we have the mystery plant.  On Tom's of Maine's toothpaste 'Botanically Bright, with natural chamomile', there is a flower head that is not chamomile, but something else in Asteraceae, and leaves that are neither chamomile, fleabane, nor oxeye daisy.  I wonder what it might be...

Tom's of Maine toothpaste Botanically Bright.  Photo by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

Wanted: italics and correct capitalization

As a botanists and scientists I am sure most of us have pet peeves on how scientific information is handled in everyday life.  One of mine is the writing of scientific names for species, the simple Genus + Species epithet that is unique to every species and help us keep order among information and knowledge.  An example of a scientific name is Acer rubrum, red maple.

There really are very simple rules to follow in how to format these names, and none of these rules are really optional, especially not if you want to promote your company or work as scientific, correct, and professional. Here are the three simple rules:

• Italicize species names
• The Genus name is capitalized in the beginning.
• The species epithet is never capitalized.

 The capitalization of the first letter of a Genus name shows that it is a genus.

For example: Acer, Rudbeckia, and Taraxacum.

The species epithet, the one-word addition  to the genus name that creates the species name, should never be capitalized.  In the past, sometimes words that originated from place names and people's names were capitalized, but that is no longer done. There is a great website called Curious Taxonomy that lists species named after all kinds of people, such as politicians, sports figures, actors, fictional and mythical characters, things and places around the world. 

Examples of correct formatting would be:
americanum, smithii, batesii, and yoda - after America, Smith, Bates, and Yoda. 

The italicization shows that they are scientific names, and not cultivar names or common names or other informal names. So for a cultivar of a species you would see names like this: Clematis alpina 'Ruby', where the cultivar name is not italicized and in quotes (read more here on cultivar names). To promote the understanding of the biodiversity of the world it is a great idea to have italicized names in concurrence with cultivars, common names and other information.  Italicized names are not harder to read, and they are unique, as opposed to common names, and can tell you a lot about the species.

Now, are these three rules followed outside the scientific world?  No, not all the time.  It is very common to see either no capitalization of genus names or capitalization of species epithets, and the lack of italicized species names are abundant. Here are some examples:

"Thuja Occidentalis" - at least the species name is in italics,
but occidentalis should have all been lower case letters. Homeopathic herbal medicine sold by TagAway.
(Note, it is homeopathic so it doesn't work, unless it is a placebo effect, link to more information.)
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

One of the worst offenders I have seen so far is LUSH, a company that creates wonderful soaps and other body products from natural ingredients.  Unfortunately their botanical science does not have the same quality.  They not only ignore all italicization of all scientific names in their online ingredient finder and in their catalogs, they also have started to capitalize some species epithets that never were capitalized even before (see 'Matricaria Chamomilla' and 'Pimenta Acris' below).  The other botanical and biological information on the LUSH website are also poor, but that will have to wait for other blog posts.

LUSH website showing 'Chamomile Blue Oil' with wrongly formatted scientific name. Screenshot by (cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com (link).

'Pimenta Acris' on the LUSH website, also wrongly formatted. This particular plant and website
has been featured on Botanical Accuracy earlier due to taxonomic confusion.
Screenshot by (cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com. (link)

When it comes to labels in botanical gardens, it might have been hard in the past to make labels with italicized names, but that is changing with modern tools and machines.  Many public garden labels have scientific names non-italicized or in all CAPS, but I hope that is going to change with new labeling methods.

Plant label from University of Oxford's Botanical garden, showing all capitalized scientific name and no italics. 
© Oxford University, fair use. (link)

Companies and others that print their labels on paper for catalogs, seed packets, and directly printed labels have less of an excuse for not using italics.  Several seed companies get their formatting correct, for examples Renee's Garden (however, the scientific name that they list for feverfew is an older synonym, not the current name):

Seed packet label from Renee's Garden for Feverfew, Tanacetum parthenium (listed as Chrysanthemum parthenium).
(c) Renee's Garden, fair use (link)

Scientific names might seem intimidating, but they are very useful and can also be entertaining.  For more information and explanations, see this blog post by Benjamin Lord.

Sometimes you see family names italicized and that is not against any rules, but it is becoming less common. I never do it in my scientific writings unless a publisher for a particular journal or book insist on it, and in my experience this is mostly a custom in parts of Europe. It is not a common practice in North America.