Experimental Station for Medicinal Plants

Medicinal plants have served human beings as traditional medicines and been used for making pharmaceutical products. Recent revival of interest in Kampo medicine made it to be established in Japanese community, while a variety of compounds produced by plants were shown to be a good stock for new drug development. Many people in the world have realized that plants harbored a huge pool of a variety of compounds for drug development. As this awareness becomes common, wild plants are now generally recognized as potential resources for useful compounds, and which leads countries to make strict rules on import and export of plant materials. The station covers an area of 3,042 square meters consisting of herbarium gardens, nurseries, experimental fields and greenhouses. Various species of important medicinal plants appeared in Japanese Pharmacopoeia and rare plants collected in fieldworks abroad are cultivated in these places and used for training of undergraduate students as well as for research works of pharmaceutical sciences.

1) Herbarium Gardens: This area shows medicinal plants of Japanese Pharmacopoeia, Japanese and European folk medicines, Labiatae and other herbs and some medicinal trees of temperate zone. These plants are used for student training and also for exercises of the training course for “Pharmacist accredited with knowledge of Kampo and natural medicines”.

2) Greenhouses: Medicinal plants of the tropical zone, such as cinnamon, frankincense, turmeric, long pepper, and more, are grown in the greenhouses.

3) Nurseries and Experimental Fields: Since 1980’s, genetic and phylogenic studies and breeding of perilla have been performed in the fields. Pure strains of perilla kept here counted more than 5700 now.

4) Herbarium and Natural Medicine Specimens: Specimens collected in fieldworks in countries of the Middle and Near East, Central and South-East Asia are kept in the herbarium and utilized for teaching and research works.

Experimental Station for Medicinal Plants of the home page is Here