Herbs & Botanicals
Species, plant part, extract, and standardization decide whether a bottle matches the evidence.
Herbal supplements, also called botanicals, are dietary supplements made from plants or plant parts. A product may use roots, rhizomes, leaves, stems, bark, flowers, fruits, or seeds as dried material, powder, tea, tincture, oil, or extract. The name on the front of the supplement bottle is only a starting point. Different species can share a common name, and different parts of the same plant can contain different mixtures of constituents. A culinary herb, a whole-plant powder, and a concentrated standardized extract can therefore represent very different active ingredient amounts even when the label highlights the same familiar plant.