Use of Medicinal Plants as Antimicrobial Agents: A Review of the Successes Story

Phytomedicine or herbal medicine is also known as ethnomedicine. It refers to the use of any plant's parts like leaves, stembarks, roots, flowers, fruits, seeds, berries, latex or exudates for medicinal purpose (Iwu, 2014). Herbal plants may be annuals, biennials and perennials. Annual herbaceous plants life period is half-one year only. That is, the plant dies completely at the end of the growing season or when they have flowered and fruited. Biennial herbal plants complete their life cycle within two seasons. Perennial herbal on the other hand, plants grow for many years and these includes many trees, shrubs and herbs (Burkhill, 2004). The stems die at the end of the growing seasons, but parts of the plant may survive under or close to the ground or root part from season to season. The new growth of plant develops from living tissues remaining on the roots