How many Herbal Plants recomonded for High medicinal value?

Question

Hi there, anybody can tell me how many Herbal Plants recommended for high medicinal value? Once I heard there are around 1300 herbal plants has high medicinal value. Somebody helps me?

Answer 1

This answer can vary much, because the term "high medicinal value" can be interpreted many ways. What makes the value high? Do you include only plants that save lives? Only plants that are well known?

I have a book of Eastern/Central U.S. Medicinal Plants that has about 1100 entries. There will be some overlap with Western species, so maybe around 2000 on the continent. Some of the plants are poisonous (like Black Locust), so aren't used by typical herbalists. Some just aren't well known for medicine, like Canada Thistle or Rattlesnake Master. Some of the plants don't do much, maybe just relieve the pain of hemorrhoids or stop diarrhea. So my best estimate would be somewhere around 1000 herbal plants with what I would call "high" medicinal value, just in the continental United States.

When I used to own an herb shop, I carried only about 200 plants in dried, bulk form. That was partly because of availability but also because I bought what would sell, which was what was well-known. About 150 of those were purchased for medicine - the others were known mostly as culinary herbs (even though most of those also have medicinal properties).