World Herbal Encyclopedia

The World Herbal Encyclopedia is an exhaustive, multi-volume work, expected to be completed in 109 volumes, documenting the medicinal plants that are used in different traditional medicinal systems across the globe. This book is an achievement for all medicinal systems along with Ayurveda. Worldwide, there are about sixty traditional medicine systems that use medicinal plants. There are an estimated 450,000 plant species in the world and approximately 60,000 of these plants are used medicinally, of which 15,000 are found in India.

The aim of this encyclopedia is to gather all medicinal plant knowledge that has been scattered over different sources into a reference series. The work has been compiled and authentically arranged, based on extensive research and data collection from various electronic resources, databases, published, and unpublished hand-written and rare manuscripts and books.

- This series contains in-depth knowledge of medicinal plants, based on written and verbal knowledge of the various folkloric and traditional treatment systems of the world.
- The series contains almost all known and unknown medicinal plants of the world which were earlier unavailable in any text in one place and can be scientifically explored for various illnesses in the future.
- These plants have been documented elaborately from the point of view of traditional users and their classical illustrations to modern scientific experiments. This unique work collates treatment methodology for simple to severe diseases known from antiquity to today.
- One of a kind, these books contain 100,000–150,000 vernacular names and numerous synonymous names (nearly 250,000) of about 60,000 medicinal plants of the world in around 1,700 tegional languages spoken across the globe.
- All the common names of the plants known in different regions of the world and more than 15,000 Sanskrit names of 1,100 medicinal plants found in ancient Ayurvedic published texts and unpublished manuscripts are also compiled here.
- This is the first treatise where around 60,000 medicinal plants of the world are given entirely new Sanskrit nomenclature (in binomial pattern) from family up to genus and species level, describing the base of origin of nomenclature in scientific terms.
- The origin of the names of the different families and genera are described in detail in these books. Also, the books include external features (morphology) of the plants, experimental pharmacological studies, chemical constitutions, medicinal properties of plants, toxicological effects, and various medicinal uses in different medicine systems, traditional medicines as well as in folk medicines popular across the world along with modern research in the respective areas.
- This is the first resource to describe plants from all groups of the plant kingdom, including algae, lichens, bryophytes, pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms, as well as member of the kingdom fungi.
- The books are illustrated by altogether approximately 35,000 canvas paintings and 30,000 line diagrams of medicinal plants. This is an incredible attempt since there are very few herbal works which depict paintings of plants as a key to identification. Also, the history of traditional medicinal systems of the world and their status in traditional medicine in the present era are described clearly in this book.

The World Herbal Encyclopedia will bring lots of benefits to botanists, taxonomists, scientists, doctors, traditional medicine practitioners, traditional pharmacists, herbal industries and anyone interested in the subject. The pharmaceutical industry will appreciate this book since there is an increasing demand for green pharmacy. Last but not least, this book will open new grounds for modern research on unexplored medicinal plants to cover almost all medicinal plants available on the earth.