The Department of Pharmacognosy is one of the earliest established departments in School of Pharmacy, Fudan University. The department has the master program since 1960s, and currently owns the doctoral program and post-doctoral program. In 2003, it was honored as Level 3 Laboratory in Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs) by State Administration of TCM. Prof. Heceng Zhang, Prof. Qin Huang, Prof. Dawen Shi, and Prof. Zhiwei Wang worked as the department chairs successively. Prof. Yin Li, Prof. Kemin Dai, Prof. Qingsheng Shun, Prof. Jixian Guo, Prof. Yeqing Zhu, Prof. Shengli Pan and Prof. Ruihua Chen had worked in the department. Prof. Daofeng Chen has been the department chairman since 1999.

The department provides the compulsory courses including Pharmacognosy and Medicinal Plants for undergraduate students in Pharmacy.

The department is committed to the modernization of TCMs, and mainly involved in three research areas and interests: 1) species systematization and quality evaluation of the commonly used traditional Chinese medicines; 2) Bioactive constituents and resources of TCMs and herbs; and 3) establishment of the quality standards of TCMs and the R&D of new drugs from TCM.