During the past 50 years there have been tremendous advances in chemical and biological techniques of analysis that have transformed research in pharmacognosy. The PSE has regularly held symposia of relevance to pharmacognosy and some of these are briefly reviewed in the area of natural products from higher plants. These symposia have charted the developments that link pharmacognosy with phytochemistry and illustrate the application of increasingly more sophisticated analytical techniques to the discovery of biologically active compounds. Plants have yielded clinical drugs, either as natural product molecules, or as synthetic modifications, particularly for chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer and malaria. Aspects of biotechnology, traditional medicines and herbal medicinal products are briefly discussed.