Using extrapolation, this webpage calculates a figure how many plant species are used medicinally worldwide.
Background
In 1991, Farnsworth & Soejarto guessed “that 35-70.000 species have at one time been used in some culture for medicinal purposes”. This figure has since been widely cited by other authors but was never confirmed. Nobody has ever attempted to produce a global checklist of medicinal and aromatic plants.
Extrapolating a global figure
A reliable estimate of the overall number of plant taxa which are used worldwide as medicinal and aromatic plants can be extrapolated from known numbers at country level (Schippmann & al. 2006).
If we know both the number of all plant species as well as the number of medicinal plants for a country, we can calculate the percentage of medicinal plants in the national flora. If we do this in a large enough number of countries, the average share in all these countries becomes a resilient figure. It is about 16 % (see Table 1).
To arrive at an absolute figure, we need to know the total number of plants worldwide. There are qualified projections for this, ranging from 352,000 (Paton & al. 2008) to 450,000 (Bramwell 2002; Govaerts 2001) plant species worldwide. We can state the total number of plant species worldwide to be between 350,000 and 450,000.
Based on the above the worldwide number of medicinal and aromatic plants ranges between 56,000 and 72,000 species.
Table 1: Percentage of medicinal and aromatic plant species in various countries
| Country | Plant species | MAP species | % |
| Albania | 3 000 | 205 | 6,8 |
| Argentina | 10 100 | 1 529 | 15,1 |
| Bulgaria | 3 600 | 750 | 20,8 |
| China | 30 400 | 7 183 | 23,0 |
| Costa Rica | 11 560 | 1 800 | 15,6 |
| France | 4 640 | 900 | 19,4 |
| Hungary | 2 200 | 270 | 12,3 |
| India | 16 800 | 4 975 | 29,6 |
| Indonesia | 28 700 | 1 075 | 3,7 |
| Jordan | 2 100 | 363 | 17,3 |
| Korea, Rep. | 2 700 | 796 | 29,5 |
| Lithuania | 1 600 | 100 | 6,3 |
| Malaysia | 13 800 | 1 200 | 8,7 |
| Mexico | 23 400 | 3 352 | 14,3 |
| Nepal | 7 000 | 1 403 | 20,1 |
| Pakistan | 5 500 | 900 | 16,4 |
| Papua-NG | 11 500 | 600 | 5,2 |
| Philippines | 8 500 | 850 | 10,0 |
| Romania | 3 400 | 283 | 8,3 |
| Saint Lucia | 1 030 | 197 | 19,1 |
| Spain | 5 100 | 700 | 13,7 |
| Sri Lanka | 3 300 | 991 | 30,0 |
| Thailand | 10 800 | 1 800 | 16,7 |
| USA | 20 600 | 2 564 | 12,4 |
| Viet Nam | 10 500 | 2 874 | 27,4 |
| Yugoslavia | 4 100 | 700 | 17,1 |
| Average | 16,0 |
Sources
- Bramwell, D. (2002): How many plant species are there? – Plant Talk 28: 32-34.
- Govaerts, R. (2001): How many species of seed plants are there? – Taxon 50: 1085-1090.
- Farnsworth, N.R. & Soejarto, D.D. (1991): Global importance of medicinal plants. – In: Akerele, O., Heywood, V. & Synge, H. (ed.): The conservation of medicinal plants, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 25-51.
- Paton, A.J., Brummitt, N., Govaerts, R., Harman, K., Hinchcliffe, S., Allkin, B. & Lughadha, E.N. (2008): Towards Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. A working list of all known plant species – progress and prospects. – Taxon 57 (2): 1-10.
- Schippmann, U., Leaman, D. & Cunningham, A.B. (2006): A comparison of cultivation and wild collection of medicinal and aromatic plants under sustainability aspects. – In: Bogers, R.J., Craker, L.E. & Lange, D. (ed.): Medicinal and aromatic plants. Agricultural, commercial, ecological, legal, pharmacological and social aspects, Springer, Dordrecht (Wageningen UR Frontis Series 17): 75-95.
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by Uwe Schippmann, 9.5.2022