Estimated number of medicinal plant species

Range 30,000 to 80,000 Species
Organism Plants
Reference Mochamad Afendi et al., KNApSAcK Family Databases: Integrated metabolite-plant species databases for multifaceted plant researches. Plant Cell Physiol. 2011 Nov 28 p.15/28 top paragraphPubMed ID22123792
Method The red line in Fig. 8B represents the maximum ratio of the number of medicinal plants to the number of wild plants, which is 0.35, with an estimated average ratio of 0.13 (slope represented by black line). Therefore, assuming 223,300 plant species exist on Earth, the estimated number of medicinal plants ranges from 29,029 (223,300×0.13) to 78,155 (223,300×0.35), and the estimated number of metabolites expected to have some efficacy in human ranges from 136,436 (29,029×4.7) to 367,328 (78,155×4.7).
Entered by Uri M
ID 107293