Traditional Plant-medicine in the treatment of type 2 diabetes: Tropical forest plants have served as a source of medicines for people of the tropics for millenia. Many medical practitioners with training in pharmacology and pharmacognosy are well aware of the number of modern therapeutic agents that have been derivated from tropical forest species. In fact, over 120 pharmaceutical prodicts currently in ise are plant-derivated, and some 75% of these were discovered by examining the use of these plants in traditional medicine.