ABSTRACT
Identification of medicinal plants is one of the oldest fields for the application of thinlayer chromatography (TLC). In the early 1950s, Kirchner et al. (1) used TLC for the analysis of herbal drugs and published many papers. Stahl standardized the methods of TLC by publishing his famous laboratory handbook in 1962 (2). This led to official recognition of TLC and its acceptance as an analytical tool. In the case of identification of herbal drugs by TLC, acceptance was very progressive and led to the publication of numerous methods that are still included in pharmacopoeias worldwide. However, with few exceptions, none of the official methods represents TLC as it is practiced today.
