About Natugreens

What Natugreens Is

Natugreens is a portal of botanical profiles devoted to medicinal, aromatic, edible, and toxic plants, published in full in 12 languages. Each profile brings together the species’ taxonomic identification, the context of its traditional use and of the research on it and, where relevant, toxicity warnings, always accompanied by a formatted references section that points to sources such as Biodiversity Heritage Library, IUCN Red List, PMC, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and USDA Plants Database. The collection currently holds more than 350 profiles in each language and keeps growing.

Why Natugreens Exists

Anyone looking for information about a plant tends to run into one of two extremes. On one side is the taxonomic and pharmacological literature, rigorous but written for specialists and scattered across databases, journals, and floras that few people outside academia know how to consult. On the other is the popular information that circulates on websites, on social media, and in everyday conversation, often valuable as a record of tradition but rarely backed by any verifiable source.

That gap has practical consequences. Many medicinal or edible species have toxic relatives or look-alikes, and a single common name can refer to completely different plants from one region to the next. Natugreens was created to fill the space between these two worlds, bringing technical knowledge into accessible language without losing sight of the source, and treating toxic plants with the same care given to medicinal ones, precisely because much of the risk lies in confusing the two.

Our Pillars

Taxonomic Accuracy and Nomenclature

Every profile starts from the species’ accepted scientific name, checked against international taxonomic databases such as IPNI, POWO (Plants of the World Online, maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), and World Flora Online, as well as regional sources such as Flora e Funga do Brasil when the plant occurs in Brazil. Synonyms and common names serve as support, never as substitutes for the scientific binomial, because the binomial is what makes it possible to know with confidence which plant is being discussed.

Safety and Toxicity Warnings

Toxic plants are not tucked away in a separate section. They are published alongside medicinal and edible plants, and the warnings aim to make clear what the literature records about their toxicity and which species they are commonly confused with. In the profiles of medicinal plants, uses are presented as traditional use or as subjects of study, with the caveat that no information on the site replaces the guidance of a health professional.

Multilingual Reach

The content is published in full in the following languages:

• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Swedish

Every version follows the same structure and cites the same references, so readers in different countries can consult the same information about the same species. This matters in botany, a field in which a single common name can shift meaning from one language to another and in which the scientific name serves as shared common ground.

What Natugreens Is Not

Natugreens is not a health service. The profiles do not offer diagnosis, prescriptions, or treatment recommendations, and nothing published here should be used to start, stop, or replace a treatment prescribed by a physician, pharmacist, or other qualified professional. Pregnant and breastfeeding women, children, people with chronic illnesses, and anyone on long-term medication should take extra care, since many plants interact with drugs or carry specific contraindications.

Nor is the site a field guide for identifying plants to eat. Images and descriptions help readers recognize the general features of a species, but they are not enough to confirm the identity of a plant gathered in the wild, and eating or preparing a plant identified only by comparison with photographs can be dangerous. Finally, Natugreens does not sell products and does not run a store.

How the Content Is Maintained

Profiles go through a multi-stage editorial review before publication and are revisited whenever there are changes in nomenclature, new references, or corrections. The full process is described on the Editorial Methodology page, and the criteria for choosing sources and nomenclature databases are set out on the Scientific Sources page. The goal is to build, profile by profile, a reference work in which readers can check where every piece of information comes from.

Last revised: 2026-10-31