LONDON BLOG: ROYAL BOTANIC KEW | DESERT ZONE | FESTIVAL OF THE VIBRANT ORCHIDS OF INDONESIA

Supporting a huge population

Indonesia’s bountiful BIODIVERSITY supports a population of around 300 million people.

Despite a large and growing population,

Indonesia has succeeded in cutting its global poverty rate dramatically

in the last 20 years.

Managing natural security of Indonesia’s citizens

and the islands’ rare and endemic plant and animal life.

Since the 1990s,

Indonesia’s forest cover has declined from 73 per cent.

This is due to illegal mining,

the clearing of rainforests for crops such as oil palm,

and the conversion of land for development.

Traditional fishing, eco-tourism

and the growing of crops such as vanilla (Vanilla planifolia)

and cloves (Syzygium argenaticum),

are examples of practices that manage Indonesia’s natural resources sustainably.

Collaborating with Indonesian

experts

Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS)

has built a global catalogue of 28,000 plants with medicinal uses.

There are already 3,000 Indonesian plants listed and

many more to be added.

We are excited to be collaborating with Kew’s MPNS TEAM.

In INDONESIA,

we have found medicinal plant records that use 14,000 different scientific names.

Because of duplication,

we still do not know exactly how many plants these names refer to.

We estimate 7,000 Indonesian plant species are used as medicines.

MPNS will now analyse this list.

The result, will be our first reliable species list.

This will help us assess conservation priorities in Indonesia

and to their medicinal research more widely.

Ria Cayahnighsih, Researcher,

Centre for Plant Conservation,

Bogor Botanic Gardens, Indonesia, 2019. 

Plant names matter

More than 28,000 plants are used as medicines around the world.

Every plant and herbal remedy is known by different

names by different people.

Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS)

has recorded an astonishing 385,000

different names for the 28,000 plants catalogued.

Confusion over which plant is which can put patients at risk.

An accurate catalogue of plant names can help prevent these dangers

and support the work of health practitioners

Bab Alkin, Kew scientist, 2020