Ingredient names
How to read a botanical ingredient name
An ingredient name is a specification, and most of them are incomplete. A good one tells you which species, which part of the plant, how concentrated the extract is and what it was measured to carry. A poor one gives you a word. This guide takes a botanical row apart element by element, then scores all nine rows of one real panel against it.
Five elements: the common name, the binomial, the plant part, the extract ratio and the standardised constituent. The common name is the least informative and the only one always printed. The product this site documents scores unusually well on the first three — six common names, five binomials, five plant parts across six botanical rows — and poorly on the last two: no extract ratio anywhere, and a standardisation on two rows of six.
- Elements a botanical row can carry
- Five
- Botanical rows on this product
- Six
- With a common name
- 6 of 6
- With a binomial
- 5 of 6
- With a plant part
- 5 of 6
- With an extract ratio
- 0 of 6
- With a standardisation
- 2 of 6
- With a printed amount
- 9 of 9
The five elements of a botanical row
A botanical row on a Supplement Facts panel can carry five identifying elements, plus the amount. Nothing requires any of the five except the name. Each one that is present makes the row checkable; each one that is absent makes it looser, and the looseness compounds.
The common name
Saw palmetto, nettle, pygeum, pumpkin seed. A common name is a word people recognise, and it is the least informative element a row can carry. One common name can cover several species on several continents, and species differ in their constituents. A common name is where a search starts; it is not where a reading ends.
The binomial
The genus and species in Latin, conventionally italicised: Serenoa repens, Vitis vinifera, Cucurbita moschata. This is the difference between a row you can look up and a row you can only guess at. Where a genus has several commercially used species, as Cucurbita does, naming the species tells you which material was extracted.
The plant part
Root, rhizome, leaf, bark, fruit, seed, aerial parts. Different parts of one plant are studied separately and are not interchangeable: a root extract and a leaf extract of the same species are two materials. A row naming the part has told you which published work applies. A row naming only the plant has left you to assume, and the assumption is often wrong.
The extract ratio
A figure such as 4:1 or 10:1, meaning that many parts of raw material produced one part of extract. It says how concentrated a material is, and roughly by how much. It describes the process rather than the result, so it is weaker than a standardisation and much better than nothing. Without it, a milligram of extract and a milligram of raw powder look identical on a label.
The standardised constituent
A statement that the extract was manufactured to a fixed proportion of something measurable: 3% phytosterols, 5% lycopene, a stated fatty-acid content. This is the single most informative element a botanical row can carry, because it is what published trials report and therefore the only basis on which a product can be compared with one. It is also the element most often left off.
Those five are not of equal value. The binomial and the plant part tell you which published record applies. The extract ratio and the standardisation tell you what the material is. The amount, printed in the right-hand column, tells you how much of it you are taking. A row carrying all five plus an amount can be compared with a trial; a row carrying the common name alone cannot be compared with anything.
All nine rows, scored element by element
Every row of this panel as the label prints it, with each of the five elements either quoted or marked as absent, and a score out of five for the six botanical rows. The second line of each name is the row exactly as the panel prints it, brackets and all.
| Row, as printed | Binomial | Plant part | Extract ratio | Standardised constituent | Elements | What the serving delivers, and what the score means |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vitamin E Vitamin E (as dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate) | Not a botanical row | — | — | Chemical form named: dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate | Not scored | 25 mg printed · about 12.5 mg delivered A nutrient rather than a plant. For a vitamin or a mineral the equivalent element is the chemical form, and this row names it. |
| Vitamin B6 Vitamin B6 (as pyridoxine hydrochloride) | Not a botanical row | — | — | Chemical form named: pyridoxine hydrochloride | Not scored | 13.8 mg · 812% DV A nutrient rather than a plant. For a vitamin or a mineral the equivalent element is the chemical form, and this row names it. |
| Saw Palmetto Extract Saw Palmetto Extract (Serenoa repens) (fruit) | Serenoa repens | Fruit | Not published | Not published | 3 of 5 | 300 mg · no standardisation printed Three of five. The missing one that matters is the standardisation: trial extracts are lipidosterolic preparations standardised to a stated fatty-acid content, and this is the largest botanical row on the panel. |
| Pygeum africanum Extract Pygeum africanum Extract (bark) (std. to 3% phytosterols) | Printed as Pygeum africanum | Bark | Not published | 3% phytosterols | 4 of 5 | 200 mg at 3% → 6 mg phytosterols Four of five, the best-specified row on the label. The percentage is what turns the 200 mg into 6 mg of phytosterols. |
| Grape Seed Extract Grape Seed Extract (Vitis vinifera) (seed) | Vitis vinifera | Seed | Not published | Not published | 3 of 5 | 100 mg Three of five. Grape seed extracts are commonly standardised to a proanthocyanidin content, and this row prints none. |
| Pumpkin Seed Extract Pumpkin Seed Extract (Cucurbita moschata) (seed) | Cucurbita moschata | Seed | Not published | Not published | 3 of 5 | 100 mg Three of five, and the species is worth noticing: Cucurbita has several commercially used members, so naming moschata tells you which one. |
| Nettle Extract Nettle Extract (leaf) | Not published | Leaf | Not published | Not published | 2 of 5 | 50 mg · leaf Two of five, the weakest row on the panel. No binomial, and the part that is declared is the wrong one for the indication: the prostate literature is on the root. |
| Boron Boron (as boron amino acid chelate) | Not a botanical row | — | — | Chemical form named: boron amino acid chelate | Not scored | 10 mg · half the adult upper limit A nutrient rather than a plant. For a vitamin or a mineral the equivalent element is the chemical form, and this row names it. |
| Lycopene 5% Lycopene 5% (Lycopersicum esculentum) (tomato) | Lycopersicum esculentum | Named as tomato, which is the plant rather than a part | Not published | 5% lycopene | 3 of 5 | 10 mg at 5% → 0.5 mg lycopene Three of five. The percentage is printed, which is what shows that 10 mg of preparation is 0.5 mg of lycopene. |
Three of the nine rows are nutrients rather than plants and are not scored on the five elements, because the equivalent for a vitamin or a mineral is the chemical form. All three name it: dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate, pyridoxine hydrochloride and boron amino acid chelate. That is the same kind of disclosure as a standardisation, and it is why the vitamin E correction on this site is possible at all.
Synthetic form. On the NIH conversion this is nearer 83% of the Daily Value.
Vitamin B6pyridoxine hydrochloride13.8 mg · 812% DVThe percentage is correct. Above the European upper limit, well below the American.
Saw Palmetto ExtractSerenoa repens (fruit)300 mgNo standardisation printed, and below the lowest arm of the CAMUS trial.
Pygeum africanum Extractbark, std. to 3% phytosterols200 mg → 6 mg sterolsTwice the trial's milligrams, under half its sterols.
Grape Seed ExtractVitis vinifera (seed)100 mgAn antioxidant with no prostate rationale given anywhere in the material.
Pumpkin Seed ExtractCucurbita moschata (seed)100 mgSpecies and part both named. No standardisation, and the trials use far more.
Nettle Extractleaf50 mgThe prostate literature is on the root. This is the leaf.
Boronboron amino acid chelate10 mgHalf the adult upper limit in one serving; seven to ten times typical intake.
Lycopene 5%Lycopersicum esculentum (tomato)10 mg → 0.5 mg lycopeneA thirtieth of the trial dose, and a forty-fourth of a cup of tomato juice.
Good at naming, poor at standardising
Add the six botanical rows up and the shape of this label becomes a single sentence. Thirty element slots, six rows times five elements, and eighteen of them are filled.
Read the first three figures and the last two as two different stories. On identification this label is unusually good: it tells you which plant and which part on nearly every row, which is more than most of this category manages and is what makes every finding on this site possible. On measurement it is poor: no extract ratio anywhere, and a standardised constituent on a third of the botanical rows. Identification tells you which literature applies. Measurement tells you whether the capsule is in the same range as that literature.
| Element | What it buys a reader | How it appears in a complete row | What this panel prints |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common name | Recognition only | Saw Palmetto Extract | Printed on all six botanical rows. The one element that is always there. |
| Binomial | Which plant, exactly | (Serenoa repens) | Printed on five of six. The nettle row carries no Latin name. |
| Plant part | Which published work applies | (fruit) | Printed on five of six. The lycopene row names the plant rather than a part. |
| Extract ratio | How concentrated the material is | 4:1 extract | Not published on any of the six. No ratio appears anywhere on this panel. |
| Standardised constituent | What the material is measured to carry | std. to 13% total sterols | Printed on two of six. Pygeum and lycopene. Saw palmetto, pumpkin seed and grape seed print nothing. |
| The amount | How much of it you are taking | 300 mg | Printed on all nine rows of the panel. This is the thing the label does best. |
The third column read as one line is the shape of a complete botanical row: a common name, a binomial, a plant part, a ratio or a standardisation, and an amount. This panel supplies four of those five on its best row and two on its weakest. Each row is taken individually on the ingredients page.
The test that takes five seconds
Count the bracketed phrases in a botanical row. A row with none is almost always a bare name. A row with two is usually carrying a part and a standardisation, which means somebody decided to tell you what is in the capsule. The best-specified row on this panel reads Pygeum africanum Extract (bark) (std. to 3% phytosterols): a Latin name in the open, and two bracketed specifications after it.
What a standardisation buys a reader
Three things, and they are the three you most want. The first is comparability with published work, because trials report the standardisation and not just a name. The second is comparability between products, because two labels printing the same percentage describe materials measured the same way. The third is reproducibility: a standardised material is specified, so next year’s bottle is meant to match this year’s.
| Row | The constituent usually quoted | Printed on this label? |
|---|---|---|
| Saw Palmetto Extract | A stated fatty-acid content; trial extracts are lipidosterolic preparations | Not published |
| Pygeum africanum Extract | Total sterols or phytosterols; trials use 13% | Yes — 3% phytosterols |
| Grape Seed Extract | Proanthocyanidins or total polyphenols | Not published |
| Pumpkin Seed Extract | No single constituent in common use; the relevant specification is oil against seed against extract | Not published |
| Nettle Extract | Varies by part; the root literature specifies the extraction solvent | Not published |
| Lycopene | Lycopene itself, as a percentage of the preparation | Yes — 5% |
The middle column is useful even where the right-hand column says nothing, because it is the vocabulary to use when asking a seller a question. Not “how much saw palmetto” but “what fatty-acid content is the extract standardised to”. A question in the trade’s own units is much harder to answer with a reassurance. The contact page writes all of them out in order.
Extract ratios, and why a weight is not enough
An extract ratio is the element most readers have never heard of and the one that most often explains a surprising milligram figure. It is written as two numbers with a colon, and it says how much raw material produced the extract in the capsule.
- 1:1 is not concentrated. One part of raw material produced one part of the named material, so the figure on the label is close to a weight of plant.
- 4:1 means four parts of raw material produced one part of extract. A milligram of it stands in for roughly four milligrams of the raw plant, by that measure.
- 10:1 and above are concentrates. The same milligram figure now represents an order of magnitude more raw material, which is why a label omitting the ratio makes two products look alike when they are not.
- No ratio at all is the commonest case, and it is the case on all six botanical rows here. A row reading Pumpkin Seed Extract (seed) 100 mg could be a lightly concentrated powder or a strong concentrate, and those are not interchangeable at any weight.
A ratio matters most where no standardisation is printed, because then it is the only thing left that describes concentration. Of the three unstandardised botanical rows on this panel — saw palmetto, pumpkin seed and grape seed — not one carries a ratio either. Those rows give you a plant, a part and a weight, and nothing at all about what the weight contains.
Where a standardisation is printed, the ratio becomes a nicety rather than a necessity: a percentage of a measured constituent already tells you what the material carries. That is why the pygeum and lycopene rows can be set against trial doses and the other three cannot. The mechanism page sets each row against the research on it.
The plant part, and the row that proves it
One word, and it decides which published work applies to a row. This panel declares a part on five of its six botanical rows, which is good practice. On one of those five the declared part is the wrong one for the indication, and that is only visible because it was declared.
The part is stated, which is good practice. It is also the wrong part for the indication.
Nettle Extract, as the detail pane on this site puts it
The arithmetic underneath that is short. The panel prints 50 mg of nettle leaf. The root trials used 360 mg a day for six months of aqueous root extract, and up to 1,200 mg a day of methanol root extract. So the row is the wrong part, and about seven times too little even if the part had matched. Two gaps, one word apart.
Hold that against the saw palmetto row, where the part is right. Serenoa repens fruit is the part the clinical literature uses, so naming the fruit is naming the correct material. The difficulty on that row is the missing standardisation rather than the part. Different elements go wrong on different rows, which is why scoring a row element by element is more useful than scoring a label as a whole.
Turning a name into a usable search
Six moves that take you from a word on a bottle to the published record, without landing in a catalogue. They work for any botanical in any category.
- 01Start from the binomial, not the common nameA common name returns shopping results. A binomial returns the material. If a row gives only a common name, look it up once to find which genus it belongs to, then search the genus and species from then on.
- 02Add the plant partRoot, bark, seed, fruit, leaf. Adding it narrows a search from a plant to a material, and in this category it is the difference between reading about the prostate and reading about allergic rhinitis.
- 03Add the constituent, not the brandPhytosterols, lycopene, fatty acids, proanthocyanidins. The constituent is what gets measured and therefore what gets written about. A search for a constituent plus a dose unit lands in the published record rather than in a catalogue.
- 04Prefer a federal fact sheet or a monograph as the first stopThe NIH Office of Dietary Supplements publishes plain-language fact sheets with a professional version underneath, and the natural-products monographs give doses and standardisations. They say what is known, what is not, and what interacts, and they do not sell anything.
- 05Check the dose unit, and check whether it is the constituent or the preparationThis is the step that goes wrong most often. A trial dose of 15 mg of lycopene is a dose of the constituent. A label row of 10 mg of a 5% preparation is a weight of material. Comparing the two directly overstates a label thirtyfold.
- 06Write down what the row did not printThe end of the search is a list of the elements the row was missing. That list is what you take to a seller or to a pharmacist, and it is more useful than any conclusion you could draw without it.
The fifth move is the one that goes wrong most often in this category, and the sixth is the one people skip. A search ending in a conclusion about an ingredient has usually overrun its evidence. A search ending in a list of the elements the row did not print has produced something you can act on: a question for the seller, or a sentence for a pharmacist.
Never guess a species
This is a rule rather than a technique, and it is one of the standing editorial rules of this site. A plant species is not identified from a photograph here, ever.
On this product the rule has one row to apply to. The nettle row prints a plant part and no binomial, and the prostate literature on nettle is specifically on Urtica dioica. It would be easy to write that species into the row and tidy the table up. It is not printed on the label, so it is not printed in the binomial column, and the column says Not published instead. The species named in the discussion of the research is the species the research used, which is a different statement from what is in the capsule.
The same restraint applies to marketing pictures. Flowering plants within one genus can be very difficult to separate from a single image, the image on a graphic was chosen by a designer rather than by a botanist, and nothing published states that the plant in the photograph is the plant in the capsule. An identification made from artwork would be a guess wearing the clothes of a finding.
The same rule, in the other direction
This desk also makes no claim about how any supplied photograph was produced. What can be shown about a set of images is shown — a checksum is a fact anyone can reproduce — and how any individual image came to exist is not something this desk can check, so it is never asserted. The rules for handling photographs and testimonials are published in full on the about page.
Common questions about ingredient names
Six questions about reading a row rather than about this product. Type in the box to filter them.
what does the latin name on a supplement label mean
It is the binomial: the genus and the species, which identify the plant precisely. A common name can cover several species across several continents, and species differ in the constituents they carry, so the binomial is the difference between a row you can look up and a row you can only guess at. Nothing requires a label to print one. On the product this site documents, five of the six botanical rows carry a binomial and the nettle row does not.
why does a label need to say which part of the plant
Because different parts of one plant are different materials and are studied separately. The clearest case in this category is nettle: the benign prostatic hyperplasia literature is on Urtica dioica root, at 360 mg a day for six months and up, while nettle leaf has a separate literature about rheumatic complaints, osteoarthritis pain and allergic rhinitis. A row declaring the leaf has declared a material the prostate trials never used.
what does standardised to a percentage mean
It means the extract was manufactured to hit a fixed proportion of a constituent somebody assayed. It is the most informative thing a label can print about a botanical, because trials report standardisations and a product cannot otherwise be compared with one. Multiply it out: 200 mg standardised to 3% phytosterols is 6 mg of phytosterols, and 10 mg of a 5% lycopene preparation is 0.5 mg of lycopene. Two printed numbers, one multiplication.
what does 4 to 1 extract mean on a supplement
It means four parts of raw material produced one part of the extract in the capsule, so the material is concentrated roughly fourfold against the raw plant. A ratio describes the process rather than the result, which is why it is weaker than a standardisation: two 4:1 extracts made with different solvents from different plant parts need not carry the same constituents. It is still worth having. No extract ratio appears anywhere on the panel this page audits.
what is lycopene 5 percent 10 mg
A preparation, not a constituent. The percentage describes the extract: the material was manufactured to contain 5% lycopene by weight. The milligram figure is the weight of that material in the serving. So 10 mg at 5% delivers 0.5 mg of lycopene rather than 10. Reading it the other way round is the commonest mistake on this kind of row, and it is the reason a standardisation percentage is the element to look for first.
does naming the species mean a supplement is good
No, and the product this site documents is the clearest demonstration of why. It names species on five of six botanical rows and plant parts on five of six, which is unusually good, and four of its nine rows still sit well below the doses the published work used. Naming and dosing are separate judgements. Good naming is what lets you make the second judgement at all, which is why it is worth crediting and why it is not the same thing as a good formula.
References
Five sources bear on this page: the labeling rule that requires a name and a quantity, and the four monographs and fact sheets that specify the standardisations and doses the published work used. All were opened and read.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2026). Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV, Nutrition Labeling (21 CFR 101.36).
- American Academy of Family Physicians (2012). Saw Palmetto Ineffective for Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (Barry et al., JAMA 2011).
- PeaceHealth / Natural Medicines monograph (2026). Pygeum: dosage, standardisation to 13% total sterols, and evidence rating.
- Drugs.com natural products database (2026). Nettles (Urtica dioica): root doses used in BPH trials, and leaf uses.
- FoodNavigator, reporting Schwarz et al., Journal of Nutrition 138:49-53 (2008). Lycopene 15 mg a day for six months in 40 men with BPH.
None of them is cited as evidence about any finished product. They are cited for what a row would have to print before a citation could be attached to it at all, which is the subject of this page.
Read the panel before you decide
Sixty capsules, two a day, thirty days a bottle. The Supplement Facts panel declares nine ingredients and nine amounts, with no proprietary blend — the most transparent label in this series. Four of those nine rows change meaning once the arithmetic is done, and all four sums are shown in full. One bottle is $69; six are $49 each. The refund window is printed as 60 days in one place and 90 in another.
- 60 or 90 days — the page prints both
- Nine ingredients, nine printed amounts, no blend
- Returns to 1370 Avenue of the Americas, Floor 4, New York, NY 10019, USA
Prices as printed on the sales page, as of October 12, 2026: one bottle $69, six bottles $49 each with free shipping. The three-bottle total is not published, so it is left blank rather than estimated. The refund window is printed as 60 days in one place and 90 in another — confirm it at the checkout. Questions first? Every published contact route is here.
Keep reading
Authorship and review
Who wrote and checked this page
What this page was checked against
- The label artwork, read at 2× and transcribed character for character. Where the label and the marketing disagree, the label is printed.
- The seller pack, quoted rather than paraphrased, and identified as marketing wherever it is used.
- The published sources listed in the references on this page. Every one was opened and read; none is cited from memory.
- The arithmetic, shown in full. Every amount on this panel is printed, so the figures here are conversions of printed amounts with the working given, never ceilings and never estimates.
- Nothing else. Any fact that was not supplied is recorded as not published rather than filled in.
Last updated October 12, 2026. A highlighted slot is a value no human has supplied yet. Who reviews these pages?