Most used sources for these documents

An important source of information is PROSEA, a collection of 24 books in 19 volumes with information on South East Asian plants. See PROSEA.

These books are very useful and I consult them very often.
But books on the shelf are getting older and the content will stay the same.
On internet with tools as search engines like Google and the growing database of Wikipedia and many other sites it is possible to gather newer information over plants, their names and use.

Plant names

The scientific plant names and classifications are changing fast as more information on relationships between plants are known.
If possible I check the current names in recent volumes of the Flora of Thailand and internet.
I try to reduce the numbers of synonyms to 2 only or none.

The Thai plant names are mostly based on
ชื่อพรรณไมแห่งประเทศไทย เตม สมิตินันทน์ -2544 (Thai Plant Names [by] Tem S[a]mitinand)
Revised edition 2001 by The Forest Herbarium Royal Forest Department, Bangkok

This book enumerates the scientific names and has often several Thai names for one species. One of them is in bold face. If the species is in this names list then first name is always the bold printed name for this plant.
Some times you see a second name. The second name is the name used by the Thai staff in the garden. Very often this one of the other names for this species mentioned in Thai Plant Names or available in other Thai plant books or web sites.

See also the index to the plant family names,
or take a look at the Thai Forest Herbarium News side.

Accepting a Thai name as the "true" name give can be problematic. If the plant starts flowering it is sometimes a completely different species then the expected one. An other problem is that people can give a Thai name for a plant, but the name can not be linked to any scientific plant name at all.

Internet and spices

Here below you can find a link to the best web site about spices I know on internet. The document by Gernot Katzer is available on the university of Graz in Austria. You can find information on ethno pharmacological use, chemistry and even recipes for cooking. The names of spices are written in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Thai etc. script.
This is the link to his English index of spice names.