How we grade
Three letters, applied without flattery. A grade states how far the evidence reaches — never how much we like the plant.
Beneath every grade sits a ladder showing where the evidence stands. A low rung is candour, not failure. We do not use softer words in place of the letters — they are less falsifiable, and this library exists to be checked.
The grades beside each rung are indicative, not automatic. A rung records that evidence of that kind exists; the grade records what it actually showed, and for which use. A botanical can reach the systematic-review rung and still hold a C — because the review found little, or because it examined a different preparation or a different complaint than the one the entry concerns. Where those diverge, the entry says so.
“Traditional use is the beginning of a question, not the end of the answer.”
Not every page in the library carries a grade, and the difference is deliberate.
A heritage record documents what the tradition holds — the warisan turun-temurun — with its ethnobotanical sources, and lists the published literature assembled for that botanical as a bibliography. It makes no assessment: no grade, no evidence review, no safety guidance. Because it asserts nothing about what a plant does, it needs no reviewer's signature, and it publishes as soon as the documentation is sourced.
A monograph is the assessment: the evidence weighed and graded A, B or C, the ladder position, the phytochemistry, and the safety and interactions section. That is health content, so it publishes only when a named, credentialed reviewer has read it and signed — the process below. Until then a botanical's page shows its heritage record and says plainly that the monograph is in preparation.
The result is that the tradition is honoured immediately and the evidence is claimed only once someone qualified has checked it.
No health content publishes without a named, credentialed human reviewer — including anything drafted with AI assistance. The reviewer's name appears on the article itself, not in a footnote.
The reviewer roster is in formation. We are inviting credentialed pharmacognosists, pharmacists and academic reviewers now — and until the first reviewer signs, nothing on this site carries a grade in public. That is the standard working, not the library failing.