Ali Floyd

Where do medicines come from? Many medicines that we use today come from the active ingredients found in plants that would have been used in traditional herbal remedies. The well-known painkiller aspirin comes from willow bark, and artemisinins, a malaria treatment, comes from sweet wormwood.

We've built a public garden with many of these types of plants. All the plants in the garden have an active ingredient which medicine is made from, or a link to herbalism. Our garden shows the history of medicine as well as how plants today are still being researched to help create new medicines. Although we don’t focus primarily on medicines made from natural products, many of our visiting students from disease-endemic countries do. Some of them work in identifying the active ingredients within native plants.

Come by, see our garden, and explore the University campus - we're open 24/7!