I'm a plant person (mostly self-taught botany but I have a strong biology background) and figured it would help me to understand plants from around the world if I understand their plant classification. So since we're doing Ayurvedic MM, I picked Andrographus as an example. I looked at the classification charts you had given us and found Order Lamiales, but couldn't find Family Acanthaceae on your chart under that heading. I have Gleason and Cronquist, but that's obviously not going to help outside of the northeast U.S. Any suggestions on how I might try to familiarize myself with some of these plants? Plant names without a plant in front of me or at least a relative of the plant won't help me create a framework of how to learn about them. I am definitely a hands-on person and am not planning any trips abroad any time soon! By the way, I have Schultes and Reis book Ethnobotany and Simpson and Ogorzaly book Economic Botany and couldn't find andrographus but noticed some of our other MM plants. As I said, I'm just using andrographus as an example and looking for suggestions about resources. Thanks!

Rich said: Hi Sarah - thanks for the question. I am guessing from your question that you are mainly asking for sources on the botany of the plants, not the medicinal uses? If that's the case, here are some thoughts for you (let me know if I am misunderstanding the question): -have you looked at my handout titled Botany Resources? Skip past the field guides which are for my region (all field guides are region-specific). The Plant Book by Mabberley is a good general quick reference - not much info per plant but tons of species are listed. Then there are a bunch of websites listed for you to check out and may be helpful, such as the Plant List website. One website I did not list but is always a fine place to start: wikipedia. It is actually a fairly good site for botanical species accounts, and from there you can go citation chasing to read the primary sources. Note that wikipedia is NOT good for info on medicinal uses, but for the botany it's decent. [Also, keep in mind that Andrographis is widely used in Chinese medicine so that is an additional source of information on that herb - and that can be true of many herbs, that they are used more widely in many traditions than people realize. Like ashwagandha having traditional African uses, as another example.] hope this helps!

Hi Rich, Thanks for your reply! I went back and looked at David's list of resources from the very beginning of the course and was happy to see that the book that I ordered on Amazon Zomlefer's Flowering Plant Families is one that he recommended. It has arrived and looks like exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for your confirmation on Wikipedia. I had found that at least got me started on the names of the plant families, but I wanted more specifics on the botany of each family, so Zomlefer seems to be good in combination with Wikipedia.