Twenty-five years of research on medicinal plants in Latin America: a personal view.

In this short article, I have discussed (on the base of the Web of Science data base search), the expressive progress of Latin American scientific production in peer review journals in the field of plants over the last 25 years. In addition, some effort has been made towards discussing the relevance of medicinal plants for the development of standardized phytomedicines with proof of quality, safety and efficacy, and a few examples of success have been briefly mentioned.