Awareness about Indian Traditional Herbal Medicines in India

India has a rich traditional knowledge and heritage of herbal medicine in the form of Ayurveda. India is the largest producer of medicinal herbs and is called as botanical garden of the world. But due to easy availability and fast action conventional allopathic medicine are used in large scale. In recent times due to side effects and growing cost of allopathic medicine, people are now looking for alternative medicines, herbal medicines being one of them. In the paper presented, awareness about common as well as lesser known herbal medicines is studied. Based on the results of survey done in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, India, it was found that among common herbal medicines, medicinal value of only four herbs; turmeric, tulsi, ginger and neem are known by more than 50% of the population whereas more than 70% population do not know the medicinal use of some of the lesser known herbal medicines. Even more than 90% of the population is not aware of most of uncommon plants of medicinal value.