Saisri. K
About 85,000 valuable medicinal plant species are reported world-wide [1,2]. Many researchers have examined long-established uses of medicinal plants but only a few studies led to the development of novel drugs for the treatment of different ailments. India is the largest producer of medicinal plants and is rightly called the "Botanical garden of the World". Medicinal plants have been stated to comprise about 8000 species and account for approximately 50% of all the higher flowering plant species of India[3]. In other words, there are about 400 families of the flowering plants; at least 315 are represented by India