During an audit in Humpata, Angola, material labelled as Santalum (sandalwood) turned out to be Brachylaena huillensis (muhuhu wood from East Africa).

During an audit in Humpata, Angola, material labelled as Santalum (sandalwood) turned out to be Brachylaena huillensis (muhuhu wood from East Africa). Different species, different regulatory status, different chemical profile. The misidentification was only caught not only due to the chemical profile but also because we secured a physical plant specimen/voucher and compared against botanical references.
A misidentified species is not just a scientific inaccuracy it can be a compliance risk and a traceability gap.

Herbarium vouchers are an underused QA tool I humbly believe.

A pressed, dried, mounted plant specimen with a proper label, scientific name, harvest date and location, lot reference, creates a permanent, verifiable link between a raw material batch and a confirmed botanical identity.

For companies sourcing wild (but I would also say for cultivated crops too), a yearly voucher collection is low-cost, straightforward to implement and makes your botanical supply chain genuinely defensible.

(First image: my own plant press: newspapers, inside a white paper too, with the plant, wooden boards, and clamps. Simple, effective and the starting point for a surprisingly useful quality assurance practice. Second image: Voucher example from Kew Royal Garden)

If you work with plant-based raw materials and don't yet have this in place, I humbly believe it's worth considering.