About 100 medicinal plants and 150 crude drugs from the medicinal plants were on display at the DG Vaishnav College on February 8 and 9. The exhibition, organised by the Department of Botany of the college, was inaugurated by Prof Usman Ali, Director, Centre for Traditional plants research. Plants that serve as an antidote to snake bite (Siriya nangai, Velaragu), anti-diabetic (Naaval and pappaya), anti-jaundice (Amla, semmai agathi) and anticancer(Nithya Kalyani) were on display. Speaking on the occasion, Dr T Thirunarayanan, emphasised the need to protect the plants. Citing recent advances in photochemistry and plant metabolomics, he highlighted the concept of using one plant drug for one disease. The use of andrographis Paniculata (Siriyanangai/Nilavembu) to cure snake bite was stated as an example. He also urged students to bio-prospect plants as only 180 plants are employed in Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani preparations. Dr Narasimhan of the Centre for Plant Ecology and Systematics traced the origin of various plants and stressed the need for properly identifying plants using morphological, anatomical and molecular techniques.