A few years ago, my husband and I spent some time in Western Europe and stayed in the home of a local amateur botanist. On one of our many treks through the countryside, she pointed to a lovely little flowering plant with spotted leaves and called it lungwort. Being from the mountains of Western Oregon, I had a “Wait, what?!” moment. Lungwort in my part of the world is a lichen that grows in the canopy of old growth forests. Pulmonaria officinalis is the lungwort I met in Europe, and Lobaria oregana is the lungwort I grew up with—two dramatically different botanicals that share the same common name.
Back in the day, this sharing of common names often came about because of the Doctrine of Signatures, which dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans but was popularized by a 16th-century philosopher named Jakob Böhme. The Doctrine of Signatures, as told by Böhme, holds that God marked plants with a sign so humans would know the plant’s purpose. In this way of thinking, herbs that resemble a part of the human body would be appropriate to treat that part of the body. In the case of the two lungworts, the spotted leaves of Pulmonaria officinalis (also called Mary’s tears and Our Lady’s milk drops) reminded people of a diseased lung: hence lungwort. Similarly, the lichen Lobaria oregana (also called lettuce lichen) reminded people of lung tissue: hence lungwort. There are multiple lungworts in the world, including some that are useful for pulmonary issues and others that can be dangerously toxic.
To clear up the inherent confusion in this naming style, 18th-century botanist, zoologist, and physician Carolus Linnaeus created rules for classifying and naming plants in botanical Latin, now called the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. The code is regulated by the International Botanical Congress, which was created in 1900 to evaluate ongoing naming issues raised by new genetic research and scientific findings. The congress meets every six years and will meet again in July 2024.
Knowing the scientific names of the botanicals we work with in our apothecaries and gardens is often helpful and sometimes essential so we come home with the correct plant or plant product. For instance, I know Galium aparine as cleavers, but one of my herbalism buddies had never heard that common name and called the plant bedstraw, which I had never heard of. Other people in other places know Galium aparine as catchweed, grip grass, or stickywilly.
However, even as herbalists and/or avid gardeners, on a practical day-to-day level, most of us don’t need to know much botanical Latin because we share a working nomenclature. If I talk about Oregon grape, osha, or slippery elm, North American herbalists (and many European herbalists) know the plants I’m referring to because we share a common language for those plants. On a local level, if I mention lungwort to my friends, they correctly assume I mean the lichen.
Even when purchasing herbal products, North American product labels use common names for plants: no Latin required. But here is where we start to run into trouble. The two problems with common names rear their heads when we need to know that we are purchasing and ingesting the correct plant material. We know multiple plants may share a common name, and a plant may have multiple common names that are distinct by location. If no one is regulating common names, how do we know for certain what we bought? Enter the American Herbal Products Association and Herbs of Commerce.
AHPA is made up of more than 350 member companies. These include processors, manufacturers, growers, and marketers of herbs and herbal products like foods, cosmetics, non-prescription drugs, dietary supplements, etc., and also companies that provide expert services to the herbal industry.
As a voice of the herbal and natural products industries, AHPA actively engages with U.S. Congress members, as well as local, state, and federal agencies that regulate herbal and botanical products. AHPA is also an active member of the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplements Association, which deals with the globalization of food supplement markets and the associated regulatory challenges.
AHPA's core mission is to promote the responsible and sustainable commerce of herbal products, which is the catalyst for publishing a reference book: Herbs of Commerce.
AHPA member companies recognized the importance of industry standardization in naming botanical ingredients on herbal product labels so that consumers know what they are getting. With that in mind, AHPA published Herbs of Commerce in 1992 as a resource for its member companies regarding the dietary ingredients used in supplements. The book was intended to be a self-regulatory guide: a list of agreed-upon standardized common names (SCN) for botanical ingredients that should appear on supplement labels that do not include Latin scientific names.
In 1997, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) was finalizing rule-making for the labeling of dietary supplements and used Herbs of Commerce as their reference. Since then, the publication has become standard. The FDA now requires that common names of botanical ingredients on dietary supplement labels be consistent with the names standardized by Herbs of Commerce. AHPA expanded and updated the guide in a second edition, published in 2000, that reflected changes in herbs on the market and in botanical nomenclature. In 2023, they published a third edition containing over 2,800 plant species, more than 1,000 botanical synonyms, and over 300 Ayurvedic and 700 pinyin names.
How does AHPA determine those standardized names? Partly by turning to an advisory council. AHPA invites experts in traditional herbalism, conventional medicine, toxicology, botany, and other areas. They volunteer their time as researchers and advisors.
We are pleased to say that Mountain Rose Herbs’ Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs, Steven Yeager, was a member of the AHPA expert advisory council for the 2023 edition of Herbs of Commerce. Steven possesses a unique combination of knowledge and skills that make him an ideal person to direct our quality control, laboratory operations, and regulatory compliance, and also makes him an excellent resource for the AHPA expert advisory council. He has extensive knowledge of botany, plant identification, and herbalism, and is also well-versed in GMP (good manufacturing practice) and FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) regulation. As well as working with Mountain Rose Herbs since 2007, he also has been an elected trustee off the AHPA Board for the last 14 years; serves as an herbal educator (and former co-owner) of the Columbines School of Botanical Studies; and sits on the boards of United Plant Savers, the Native Plant Society of Oregon, and the AHPA Foundation for Education and Research on Botanicals.
We are pleased to say that AHPA's Herbs of Commerce, 3rd ed. received the 2024 American Botanical Council (ABC) James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award in the reference/technical category!
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Inside Mountain Rose Herbs, Herbalism
Heidi is an award winning freelance writer with a passion for urban homesteading. She has been honored to receive a number of literary prizes including the esteemed Pushcart Prize and an Individual Artists Award in Creative Writing from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is proud to have earned a certificate of completion for the Herbal Medicine Making Course at the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. When she isn’t working in the garden, cleaning the henhouse, preserving food, crafting herbal formulations, or writing and editing content for really fantastic small businesses, you’ll likely find her with her nose in a book.
A few years ago, my husband and I spent some time in Western Europe and stayed in the home of a local amateur botanist. On one of our many treks through the countryside, she pointed to a lovely little flowering plant with spotted leaves and called it lungwort. Being from the mountains of Western Oregon, I had a “Wait, what?!” moment. Lungwort in my part of the world is a lichen that grows in the canopy of old growth forests. Pulmonaria officinalis is the lungwort I met in Europe, and Lobaria oregana is the lungwort I grew up with—two dramatically different botanicals that share the same common name.
Back in the day, this sharing of common names often came about because of the Doctrine of Signatures, which dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans but was popularized by a 16th-century philosopher named Jakob Böhme. The Doctrine of Signatures, as told by Böhme, holds that God marked plants with a sign so humans would know the plant’s purpose. In this way of thinking, herbs that resemble a part of the human body would be appropriate to treat that part of the body. In the case of the two lungworts, the spotted leaves of Pulmonaria officinalis (also called Mary’s tears and Our Lady’s milk drops) reminded people of a diseased lung: hence lungwort. Similarly, the lichen Lobaria oregana (also called lettuce lichen) reminded people of lung tissue: hence lungwort. There are multiple lungworts in the world, including some that are useful for pulmonary issues and others that can be dangerously toxic.
To clear up the inherent confusion in this naming style, 18th-century botanist, zoologist, and physician Carolus Linnaeus created rules for classifying and naming plants in botanical Latin, now called the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. The code is regulated by the International Botanical Congress, which was created in 1900 to evaluate ongoing naming issues raised by new genetic research and scientific findings. The congress meets every six years and will meet again in July 2024.
Knowing the scientific names of the botanicals we work with in our apothecaries and gardens is often helpful and sometimes essential so we come home with the correct plant or plant product. For instance, I know Galium aparine as cleavers, but one of my herbalism buddies had never heard that common name and called the plant bedstraw, which I had never heard of. Other people in other places know Galium aparine as catchweed, grip grass, or stickywilly.
However, even as herbalists and/or avid gardeners, on a practical day-to-day level, most of us don’t need to know much botanical Latin because we share a working nomenclature. If I talk about Oregon grape, osha, or slippery elm, North American herbalists (and many European herbalists) know the plants I’m referring to because we share a common language for those plants. On a local level, if I mention lungwort to my friends, they correctly assume I mean the lichen.
Even when purchasing herbal products, North American product labels use common names for plants: no Latin required. But here is where we start to run into trouble. The two problems with common names rear their heads when we need to know that we are purchasing and ingesting the correct plant material. We know multiple plants may share a common name, and a plant may have multiple common names that are distinct by location. If no one is regulating common names, how do we know for certain what we bought? Enter the American Herbal Products Association and Herbs of Commerce.
AHPA is made up of more than 350 member companies. These include processors, manufacturers, growers, and marketers of herbs and herbal products like foods, cosmetics, non-prescription drugs, dietary supplements, etc., and also companies that provide expert services to the herbal industry.
As a voice of the herbal and natural products industries, AHPA actively engages with U.S. Congress members, as well as local, state, and federal agencies that regulate herbal and botanical products. AHPA is also an active member of the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplements Association, which deals with the globalization of food supplement markets and the associated regulatory challenges.
AHPA's core mission is to promote the responsible and sustainable commerce of herbal products, which is the catalyst for publishing a reference book: Herbs of Commerce.
AHPA member companies recognized the importance of industry standardization in naming botanical ingredients on herbal product labels so that consumers know what they are getting. With that in mind, AHPA published Herbs of Commerce in 1992 as a resource for its member companies regarding the dietary ingredients used in supplements. The book was intended to be a self-regulatory guide: a list of agreed-upon standardized common names (SCN) for botanical ingredients that should appear on supplement labels that do not include Latin scientific names.
In 1997, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) was finalizing rule-making for the labeling of dietary supplements and used Herbs of Commerce as their reference. Since then, the publication has become standard. The FDA now requires that common names of botanical ingredients on dietary supplement labels be consistent with the names standardized by Herbs of Commerce. AHPA expanded and updated the guide in a second edition, published in 2000, that reflected changes in herbs on the market and in botanical nomenclature. In 2023, they published a third edition containing over 2,800 plant species, more than 1,000 botanical synonyms, and over 300 Ayurvedic and 700 pinyin names.
How does AHPA determine those standardized names? Partly by turning to an advisory council. AHPA invites experts in traditional herbalism, conventional medicine, toxicology, botany, and other areas. They volunteer their time as researchers and advisors.
We are pleased to say that Mountain Rose Herbs’ Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs, Steven Yeager, was a member of the AHPA expert advisory council for the 2023 edition of Herbs of Commerce. Steven possesses a unique combination of knowledge and skills that make him an ideal person to direct our quality control, laboratory operations, and regulatory compliance, and also makes him an excellent resource for the AHPA expert advisory council. He has extensive knowledge of botany, plant identification, and herbalism, and is also well-versed in GMP (good manufacturing practice) and FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) regulation. As well as working with Mountain Rose Herbs since 2007, he also has been an elected trustee off the AHPA Board for the last 14 years; serves as an herbal educator (and former co-owner) of the Columbines School of Botanical Studies; and sits on the boards of United Plant Savers, the Native Plant Society of Oregon, and the AHPA Foundation for Education and Research on Botanicals.
We are pleased to say that AHPA's Herbs of Commerce, 3rd ed. received the 2024 American Botanical Council (ABC) James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award in the reference/technical category!
You may also enjoy:
Topics: Inside Mountain Rose Herbs, Herbalism
Heidi is an award winning freelance writer with a passion for urban homesteading. She has been honored to receive a number of literary prizes including the esteemed Pushcart Prize and an Individual Artists Award in Creative Writing from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is proud to have earned a certificate of completion for the Herbal Medicine Making Course at the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. When she isn’t working in the garden, cleaning the henhouse, preserving food, crafting herbal formulations, or writing and editing content for really fantastic small businesses, you’ll likely find her with her nose in a book.
