Buyer education
Eight questions to ask before buying any botanical product
You don't need a pharmacognosy degree to buy botanicals carefully. You need eight questions — most answerable from the label and the supplier's website, one answerable only by a laboratory document, and one that isn't about the product at all.
Identity and specification
- 1. Which species, by full scientific name? A trade name ("sea moss," "ginseng") can cover several different plants.
- 2. Which plant part? Root, leaf, flower, and aerial parts of the same plant can be chemically different materials.
- 3. What form and specification — raw powder, extract ratio, or standardized extract with a named marker percentage?
- 4. Where was it grown or wild-harvested, and by what supply chain? Vague sourcing usually means long, undocumented chains.
Documentation
- 5. Is there a batch-specific certificate of analysis — and does it confirm identity, potency, and contaminant testing with numbers?
- 6. Does the label make disease claims? "Treats," "cures," and "prevents" on a supplement are regulatory violations — a seller ignoring that rule is telling you how they treat the others.
- 7. Does the marketing match the chemistry? A product promoted on a compound that authentic material barely contains (see the blue-lotus apomorphine case) is a coherence test failed.
The one that isn't about the product
8. Have you told your clinician? Not for permission — for the interaction check that only someone who can see your full medication list can do. In national survey data, roughly two-thirds of supplement users never mention it to their clinician, which means the most preventable category of botanical problems mostly goes unchecked. It's one sentence at your next appointment.
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Want the evidence itself?
Myto Intelligence maps 1,173 medications to 705plants, fungi & ethnobotanicals by shared mechanism — every result with an evidence tier and a citation. It teaches, compares, and cites; it never tells anyone what to take.