Our botanical garden

Herbal raw material identity

The best solution to ensure the botanical identity and quality of quantified Reference Extracts was to create a garden run by our laboratory. Most qRE are manufactured from plant specimens cultivated in-house.

All raw material undergoes a two-step verification procedure carried out by the laboratory’s botanist, using contemporary Floras and our internal monographs:

• Species authentication of each new batch of cultivated plants at flowering time
• The raw material (leaves, roots, flowering tops, seeds etc) used for manufacturing qRE is checked using our internal monographs on arrival at the production unit.

Raw material for qRE manufactured from tropical or arctic plants, provided and certified by professional partners, is authenticated upon receipt.

A specimen of each plant, collected at flowering time, is kept at the laboratory’s ever-growing herbarium as the species’ reference.

The time of harvesting the relevant plant parts is based on the traditional information available about the medicinal plant species: the right season as well as other data like shape, size, color etc.

All data related to cultivation, harvesting and authentification processes is recorded.

Pictures of our botanical garden’s plants were used to illustrate this site.

Creating the botanical garden

Located a few kilometers away from our laboratory in Auvergne (France), the garden was started in 2017 on a mostly open plot of land, also containing an undergrowth and several mature hardwood trees, all precious for their shade and some for their traditional medicinal value (horse chestnut, willow, walnut, Ginkgo biloba….).

A mid-sized pond was created for the cultivation of herbs like cranberry, horsetail, meadowsweet, Rheum palmatum, Juncus effusus etc.

About one third of the garden’s plants are of Eastern origin and used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Today we grow over 100 species and continue planting and harvesting new medicinal herbs every season to keep on widening the scope of qRExtracts’ catalog.

Environmental care

Our cultivation methods are 100% organic and based on the principles of permaculture and biodiversity. Our gardeners’ on-going research on plant associations aim for natural protection against diseases, also using local organic mulches, coverings and fertilizers.

Whenever possible, species are renewed using last season’s seeds, to guarantee botanical identity and strengthen the plant through better environmental adaptation.

Due to the diversity of species requiring quite different types of care, the laboring is done wholly by hand. Irrigation water comes from a natural source, located in an ancient cave-well in the center of the garden.