Virginia Plant Savers
  Friends of the United Plant Savers

      Students of herbal medicine often ask what herbs can be used in the place of threatened or at-risk herbs. The table of analogs (below) was developed by Jane Bothwell and was published in the summer 2002 and winter 2003 edition of United Plant Savers Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation. This is provided as a service to those who do not have access to the past issues of the Journal.

      The simplest answer to the question about what herbs to use as analogs is simply to use a cultivated species rather than one collected from the wild. When a cultivated species is not available, then an analog may be used. An analog is an herb having similar or identical medicinal compounds, or an herb which has similar medicinal action. An analog may have the same medicinal compounds as an at-risk herbs, though the compounds may be in different proportions. This is often the case where the analog for the substituted herb belongs to the same genus as the at-risk herb.

      Analogs from different genera or different families often share some of the same chemical constituents, or if they do not share the same constituents, they may have similar physiological action. For example, the cultivated form of Echinacea purpurea may be substituted for Echinacea angustifolia. Because herb analogs may not have all of the same medicinal actions as the at-rink herbs, it may be necessary to use several analogs to replace the at-risk plants. If cultivated analogs are not available, choose non-native, alien plants as alternative. In many instances these non-native species are much more widely distributed, and in a few cases, invasive. Many of these alien species are powerful medicinals.

      In the table below, the names of the at-risk herbs are in red and the names of the analogs are in green.

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