Historically, plants have been identified by an examination by a plant taxonomist of the leaf, fruit, flower, and other plant parts necessary for proper determination (7). Precise notes regarding the specimen’s colleting location, including latitude and longitude, village, county, province or state, and country, and a description and photos of the plants height, width, habit, color, fragrance, etc. in its natural habitat, may also be required. Of course, this type of information is usually not available when purchasing an extract or dried plant material from a vendor.
The U. S. Pharmacopeia (8) has thin-layer chromatography (TLC) methods for identifying certain commonly found dietary supplement herbal products, based upon their chemical constituents. Other analytical techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) could just as easily be used.
DNA fingerprinting methods can also be developed for identifying plants (9). This is especially useful to ensure that microbial strains, which seem often to be counted as botanicals in the cosmetic world, have maintained their integrity over multiple generations of serial transfers during the culture maintenance process.