Since his youth, Maryono's ambition was to develop traditional treatments and conserve medicinal plants.

But his position as a civil servant didn't provide him with the means to support his dream - his teacher's salary was barely enough to meet his family's needs.

"To conserve medicinal plants I needed to develop land and I had to search for medicinal plants in a number of regions," he said. "I needed more income

and it's difficult to depend on a teacher's salary."

In the end, the father of two gave up on teaching altogether. In 2003, he established a business called the Salama Nusantara Company, which produced Mahkota Dewa (goddess crown).

Mahkota Dewa Tea has three ingredients: mahkota dewa fruit (Phaleria papuana)

(70 percent), green tea (Camelia sinensis) (20 percent) and benalu tea (Scurrula cetropurpurea) (10 percent). It is believed that these three basic ingredients can cure disease and are good for health.

To ensure local people benefited, Maryono and UGM worked with 150 Mahkota Dewa farmers in Samigaluh, Kulonprogo. The farmers were given training in organic farming, and processing their produce until it was ready to use. Maryono refused to accept raw materials: "The purpose was to help the farmers get better economic value out of their produce."

Maryono's business developed rapidly, with Mahkota Dewa Tea appealing to customers in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, as well as locally. Maryono used the profits from his endeavors to pursue his goal of opening a clinic for traditional treatments.

The income he earned through the Mahkota Dewa Tea business enabled him to buy 7,000 square meters of land, on which he built a laboratory he called the Kulonprogo Development Herbarium Centre. He has since achieved his target of gathering together on that land 1,000 types of medicinal plants.

To ensure his health claims can be backed up by scientific evidence, Maryono has worked with the Pharmacy Faculty at Gadjah Mada University, several NGOs and the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) to conduct research. Every type of plant has been tested to discover what the plant contains and its health benefits.

"This is to avoid making any false claims," he says. "We don't make a claim till we know that a certain plant is beneficial, even if we can't explain its medical properties."

The laboratory has also become a medicinal plant development center, and a place to provide public information - currently underway is a teaching room for teaching university students and researchers.

Maryono's longer-term goal for his center is to establish Eastern medical treatments, using herbal medicine from plants administered by qualified medical staff.

Maryono, who will turn 46 this year, developed his interest in herbs because his parents made a living from selling medicinal herbs - proving to him they could bring both health and an income.

"The proof is that I was able to go to university because of medicinal herbs," he says.

Maryono graduated from UGM in Mathematics and Physics Faculty in 1987, before becoming a teacher.

His interest in traditional treatments was reinforced by the growing modern concerns about healthy living. With globalization and fast food, people's bodies encountered more and more damaging substances - which were treated with false medicines and supplements with preservatives that further damaged the body.

He points to Indonesia's Java Dwipa traditional treatment system, which used medicinal plants as the basic ingredients; the system had been proved effective by the time the Dutch colonialists arrived, but was gradually replaced by Western medical approaches.

"It wasn't just the manner of the treatment," Maryono says. "The law and culture also changed to the Western style. Even our laws are still those that we inherited from the Dutch."

As Maryono points out, society doesn't fully understand that despite the expense of many modern medicines, for many the source may have been a plant. Even medicines to treat diabetes -expensive and patented in the United States - use cinnamon as their basic ingredient.

The Dutch colonialists also damaged the national mentality, he says, causing Indonesians to lose their faith in local products, with exports always considered better.

Maryono gives as an example a medical product, marketed as Kaling, from Malaysia and produced in Singapore that keeps selling out, despite its high price.

"However, all the ingredients come from us," he says. "We are a resource-rich nation especially with medicinal plants, yet we are always the party that gets cheated."

His first step was to improve the image of traditional plants; he attributes the negative image to people not thinking about what they are doing, buying medicines labeled "traditional" but that use chemical ingredients.

Maryono is certainly optimistic about his mission: "The global trend is to get back to nature, and the real benefits of medicinal plants make me believe that traditional treatments will eventually be accepted by society."

There are also many species of animals that can provide health benefits; Maryono raises some of these. They include gagak (ravens), tokek (geckos) and serangga (insects). "I actually look after the geckos," he says. "If there is someone sick, maybe with a rash, I cut the gecko up to make medicine."

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