Romanian Aromatic and Medicinal Plants: From Tradition to Science

Abstract

From ancient times, plants have been used by humans for food, fodder, fibre and medicinal purposes. Several plants were empirically considered as treatments for a large array of illness and medical conditions. Each community had specific natural remedies, based on the geographical area, environmental conditions and other factors. Thus, the use of plants can be considered as part of the intangible cultural heritage of each community. In the geographical area of today's Romania, the ancient inhabitants, Dacians, had very good knowledge regarding the use of plants for medicinal purposes, as presented by several historical sources. The present work describes protocols for the extraction and purification of natural extracts, analytical characterisation, in vitro and in vivo evaluation of their potential applications as well as some practical examples of their application on selected Romanian native medicinal and aromatic plants. The presented results offer scientific support to their traditional use, suggesting in the same time some modern applications, for example in the nanotechnology field.

Challenge of Utilization Vegetal Extracts as Natural Plant Protection Products

“…Plants can be considered as a perfect laboratory with potential to supply organic and inorganic substances without which human and animal life would be impossible [15,27,32,40,41]. These substances synthesized in the plant kingdom may be of primary (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) or secondary (terpene, steroids, anthocyanins, anthraquinones, phenols and polyphenols, etc.)…”

“…Fierascu et al performed another comprehensive review of spontaneous flora of Romania with biomedical applications [41].…”

“…Among the traditional plants, they describe the extraction methods used to obtain Heracleum spondylium (hogweed), Anethum grasveolens L. (dill), Taraxacum officinalis L. and Arctium lappa L. (burdock) extracts, in various variants, especially maceration-percolation-decoction-infusion in association with the analytical techniques for the characterization of these extracts [41]. However, in the spontaneous flora, there are elements that can also have a biopesticide effect, belonging to extremely common botanical families: Lamiaceae, Asteraceae, Primulaceae, Equisetaceae, Hypericicaceae, Poligonaceae, Apiaceae, etc., but the species that are parts of the Lamiaceae family numerically predominate.…”

The Influence of Microwave Treatments on Bioactive Compounds and Antioxidant Capacity of Mentha piperita L.

“…Following new research, medicinal plants have been brought back to actuality and considered valuable for the pharmaceutical industry, which has led to the fact that lately they are used more and more often in the prevention and cure of numerous diseases that affect the human body. Romania is one of the richest countries in medicinal and aromatic plants [ 1 ]. Due to the varied climatic conditions, as well as the multiple landforms and soil types, and other favourable conditions, more than 300 species of medicinal plants can be found in our country.…”

Therapeutic Use of Some Romanian Medicinal Plants

“…In traditional Romanian medicine, almost all the natural remedies taken from the Dacians are found [8,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Their complex information about therapeutic botanicals was appreciated as being very impressive and different ancient historical texts [8, 10-13, 17, 18, 20, 21].…”